


The Reaction

by Derin



Series: Parting the Clouds [12]
Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-26
Updated: 2015-07-26
Packaged: 2018-04-11 09:00:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 25,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4429340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Derin/pseuds/Derin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jeremy Jason McCole, star teen actor and epitome of cuteness, is on the yeerks' radar. And the Animorphs have to save him, for the sake of the world... and hopefully a little gratitude. </p>
<p>But something is wrong with Rachel. After acquiring a crocodile, she finds herself unable to control her morphing when she feels intense emotion. And there's a lot going on to make her feel intense emotion. Can Cassie protect her friend from herself while they all protect Jeremy Jason from the yeerks, and the world from Jeremy Jason? Especially since Cassie's past betrayals of Rachel are starting to come back to bite them...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Much thanks to JustAnotherGhostwriter, who has generously loaned her awesome betaing skills and general support to this project from start to finish and without whom this would almost certainly not exist (and would certainly be much worse), and Pawnofanellimist, as well as my innumerable temporary beta readers. Also thanks to Featherquillpen, who came up with the series title.

My name is Cassie. And sometimes, I am forced to face the fact that actions have consequences.

“This is my fault,” I said firmly to Rachel as we wove our way down the crowded paths through The Gardens. “This is all my fault. It's because I asked Mom to help get people interested in the National Park after the... the logging thing. That's why this is happening to us.”

Rachel nodded, “So what you're saying is, we have you to thank for this day off.”

“It's not a day off!” I hissed. “It's a field trip! To The Gardens!”

“Close second.”

“And my mom is going to do a presentation! To our class! She always thinks she has to be cool when giving presentations. She's going to say something about 'The Fudgies', or 'Snoop Diggity Dog', or 'Boys Eleven Men', or 'Nice is Neat'. I just know it.”

Rachel raised an eyebrow. "Okay, The Fugees, Snoop Doggy Dogg and Boyz II Men I get. But what's Nice Is Neat?"

“You know, NIN? Nine Inch Nails? I wanted to get the new CD but I was broke, so I told Mom the initials stood for Nice Is Neat.”

Rachel nearly snorted juice out of her nose. “You? No way, that sounds like something Marco would make up.”

“I might've gotten the idea from Marco. He said, 'What parent could possibly resist a rock group named Nice Is Neat'? He wanted to make a tape of the CD, so...” I shrugged.

"Cassie, Cassie, Cassie. When you start taking advice from Marco, the end of civilization is very near. Besides, you and Nine Inch Nails? Do you even like the band?"

I made a face. "Actually they're a little depressed and grim and harsh for me. Although it would be perfect for my mood today. I know she's going to bring it up. She's going to say something like, 'Saving endangered species is cool - like listening to Nice Is Neat.' I'll have to change schools. I'll have to move to another town.” I glanced about at the other students around us, all smiling, all happy to be out of the classroom. Maybe we should go talk to _their_ parents. See how they liked it.

“Why me, Rachel?” I whined as I leaned against the railing of the crocodile pit. “Of all the places we could go on a field trip, why here?”

"I don't know," Rachel shrugged. "Just your bad luck, I -" her head spun, and her eyes locked on a small boy who was climbing the railing. "Hey! Hey! Get down off there, you -"

Suddenly, he was gone.

Over the edge.

Into the crocodile pit.

“Aaaaahhhhh!"

The little boy screamed and suddenly everyone was silent.

Then, a split second later, everyone was yelling.

"Help! Help!"

"He just fell in!"

"I couldn't stop him!"

"I didn't even see!"

"Tyler! Tyler! Are you all right?"

I grabbed Rachel's arm and spun her to face me. "I'll get help. I'll be right back. Don't do anything dumb, Rachel. Don't!" Without waiting for a reply, I sprinted away; ducked under a railing, slipped behind a statue, and pushed my way into one of the service doors that let employees move between exhibits. They're supposed to be locked, but there are a few used so often that nobody bothers.

“Help!” I screamed, running in the direction of the veterinary offices. “Help!”

Ms Pendle, one of my mother's workmates, turned into the hall and looked at me with shock. “Cassie, what – ”

“A little boy fell in the crocodile pit!” I said quickly.

Her eyes widened, and she was off, yelling into a walkie-talkie as she ran. I, of course, returned to the pit.

In time to see the small kid, one leg clearly injured, scrambling over rocks for a ladder in the edge of the pit, trying to climb out. There was blood on his leg, and blood in the water, but somehow, he'd escaped. Handlers burst in with nets and tranquiliser darts, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

“That could've been bad, huh, Rach...”

Where was Rachel?!

I scanned the crowd, trying to pick out her telltale golden hair and crimson top, but saw nothing. I was starting to panic when I happened to glance back down into the pit. Only to see her being escorted out into the halls by employees.

I dashed back into the halls myself to meet up with her. Ignoring the zookeepers who tried to stop me, I pushed my way forward and grabbed her shoulders. “Rachel! Are you okay?!”

She looked at me and grinned, seeming tired but unhurt. She was straightening her jeans, surreptitiously doing up the button; to the zookeepers it probably looked like a normal clothing adjustment, but I'd seen her dress after morphing many times before.

Morphing. In a pit full of crocodiles. Overlooked by dozens of witnesses, and with very few safe blind spots.

“What,” I hissed, “did you do?”

Her grin widened. “Well, I don't think we'll have to see your mom's presentation.”


	2. Chapter 2

“I see," Jake said. It was the next day and we were gathering, as usual, in my barn. "So basically you're saying it was no big deal. You jump into an alligator pit, you -"

"Crocodile, not alligator," I corrected him.

Jake cocked one eyebrow at me. I shut up.

"You jump into a crocodile pit, morph into a crocodile, engage in a battle to see who's going to eat the kid, end up carrying the kid on your back, and your feeling is this was all pretty cool?"

Rachel shrugged and looked at me.

"She _did_ save the kid," I pointed out.

"She also came very, very close to showing the entire world what she really is," Jake said, using the low, silky voice he uses when he's really upset. He was pacing, too. Pacing is a bad sign.

"What was I supposed to do?" Rachel asked. "Let the little boy get chomped?"

"Yes!" Marco said, speaking up. "Yes. See, we're fighting to save the whole world, not one kid. And you endangered all that by trying to be the offspring of Xena: Warrior Princess and Superman."

<Xena and Superman have a child? I didn't even know they were dating,> Tobias said in open thought-speak. Rachel shot him a quick smile that she probably thought the rest of us didn't see.

Marco had a point, but I was sort of annoyed at the insinuation that the kid was disposable. “The enclosure has blind spots, for when the animals are feeling crowded,” I pointed out. “She couldn't be seen morphing.”

“And I guess the zookeepers walking in when you were mid-morph would've been easier to explain?”

"Jake, if you think what I did was so wrong, what would you have done?"

Jake stopped pacing. "The point is, secrecy is absolutely important," he said.

But Rachel wasn't letting him go that easily. "Jake," she repeated, "what would you have done in my place?"

Jake scratched his ear. He grinned sheepishly. "Just because I would have done the same thing doesn't make it right."

"I think Rachel was a real hero," I said.

<Rachel was brave. Bravery is a great virtue.>

Marco rolled his eyes at Ax. "Thank you, Obi-Wan Kenobi, for that wisdom. Of course she was a hero. She's always a hero. Rachel can't stop being heroic. Being stupidly brave is like some nervous tic she can't control. But what if someone had caught her morphing on videotape?"

Rachel stopped smiling.

"Okay, well, anyway, Rachel, you were very brave. You were also very lucky. The news reports say you 'fell into' the pit because you were trying to see the kid. Everyone is focused on how amazing it supposedly was that a kid could ride an alligator... crocodile. The kid's going to be on five different talk shows."

"Great. So I'm the idiot girl who 'fell' into the pit, and the kid is some big hero."

"Be glad it worked out that well," Jake said.

I raised my hand, like I wanted to ask a question in class. This gesture, I had learned, annoys Jake, but it innocuous enough that he can't really say anything about it.

“Are we done yelling at Rachel?” I asked. “I have work to do.”

Jake laughed. "I don't yell," he said. "I'm not anyone's parent."

"You tell 'em, Dad," Marco said.

We all laughed and the tension was broken. Until Jake said, "Hey, by the way, Tom said something about how The Sharing is going to hire that kid from Power House as a spokesman."

"That TV show?" Marco said. "Huh. That's strange. Well, anyway, I have homework piled up on my desk at home. Plus, I have the new Nintendo game. You know, the one where – "

He stopped talking and just stared at Rachel and me. Probably because we were standing there with our mouths hanging open.

"What's with them?" Marco asked Jake.

Jake looked mystified. "What is with you two?"

"Jeremy Jason McCole is going to be endorsing The Sharing?" Rachel asked in a wavering voice.

I cleared my throat. I was pretty sure my own heart had leapt upto block it/ "Jeremy Jason McCole?" I echoed in awestruck tones.

Jake shrugged. "Yeah, it's too bad, but it's not like anyone cares. He's just some wimpy little actor. I mean, it's not like he's Michael Jordan... "

"... or Brett Favre," Marco added.

< ... or Wayne Gretzky,> Tobias offered.

<What is an actor?> Ax wondered.

"… or anyone else important," Jake concluded. "He's just an actor. I mean, he's a dork."

<What is a dork?> Ax asked.

They didn't get it; none of them got it. Of course they wouldn't. They were boys. They didn't understand that they were talking about _Jeremy Jason McCole_.

<That hair!> Tobias said derisively.

"I love his hair," I said, my voice sounding pathetically weak even to me.

"Plus he's even shorter than I am," Marco said, somewhat resentfully.

"The difference being that Jeremy Jason McCole is cute," Rachel said.

"He is more than cute," I added. "He is the single cutest boy on the planet."

"He's in every magazine," Rachel said. "Teen, YM, Seventeen."

"Wussy Weekly, Midget Monthly, The New Dork Times..." Marco added. He and Jake exchanged a high five.

"Jake,” Rachel said insistently, “you're not getting it. About half the girls in our school have a poster of Jeremy Jason Mc-Cole in their bedrooms or in their lockers, or both. He is the number one cute guy in the country. He has like twenty Web sites just about him. If he endorses The Sharing, it would be as if..." she looked to me for help.

"As if the entire female cast of Baywatch endorsed something," I supplied.

"Yeah. Like that."

Jake's smile evaporated. "You're saying this actor kid has that kind of influence?"

"He has that much power?" Marco said. "He has Baywatch-level power?"

<Yasmine Bleeth power?> Tobias echoed.

<Bleeth?> Ax echoed. <Is that a word?>

"If Jeremy Jason McCole becomes a spokesman for The Sharing, they'll be signing up girls like crazy," I said.

"Then this is serious," Jake said.

"Yeah, Jake, it is. We have to stop this from happening."

I sent Rachel a sly, sidelong glance. "Of course ... we might have to actually meet Jeremy Jason in order to save him."

"We have to do our duty," Rachel said seriously. "I mean, for a start, we have to find out if he's already a Controller."

"And we'd probably have to meet him to do that."

"Get close to him."

"Very close."

"Absolutely."

"Mmm-hmmm."

"The two of you are making me sick," Jake said.

I just raised an eyebrow at him. “Stopping The Sharing acquiring this amount of pull? This is probably our most important mission yet. The fate of the world hinges on the fate of Jeremy Jason McCole.”

“Why?” Marco groaned, putting his face in his hands. “Why us?”


	3. Chapter 3

Jeremy Jason McCole.

Teen star of Power House and cutest boy ever. Now, a possible enemy – or at least, a possible enemy resource.

And to save the world, we were going to have to rescue him from the yeerks.

Yeah, that's right. Calm, rational Cassie, child of two scientists and seeker of truth, liked a cute celebrity. I'm not a robot.

But even if it did involve Jeremy Jason McCole, it was a serious mission. I copied down Rachel's new crocodile on my list of morphs (she now tied with me for the most morphs – fifteen – and we still had no idea whether there was a limit), sat under a tree, and started puzzling out what to do.

Obviously, we needed to know if Jeremy Jason was a Controller. And if not, stop him from becoming a Controller. Without him or the yeerks realizing what we were doing. If he was endorsing The Sharing, he'd have to be coming to our town, but would he arrive more than three days before he had a chance to do... whatever they wanted him to do? And... how, exactly, were we supposed to stop them from taking him?

I briefly entertained the possibility of a daring rescue, were we led him off into the forest away from the yeerks and then revealed ourselves to explain the danger. But of course that was unrealistic. We couldn't let him know who we were, not under any circumstances. Not while there was still the possibility of capture.

What were we supposed to _do_ with him? Trap him in the forest forever?

If there was a way to make it infeasible for the yeerks to infest him without him realising what they were, he would probably be safe. But to do that, we'd either have to make it too hard by protecting him, or make him not worth it by reducing his influence. We didn't have the power to do either of those things, not really.

After so much time, you'd think I would be used to the concept of hopeless battles. But normally there was some stupidly suicidal thing we could at least try. With this... it was impossible to know what to aim for. He would have to come to our town eventually, and when he did, we could monitor him... but when a fight broke out, when they decided to infest him, what could we do?

With a sigh, I reburied my notes and headed back to the house. I was somewhat startled to see my mother in the backyard, pacing; as soon as she saw me, she jogged over.

“Cassie!” She looked upset.

“What? What's wrong?!”

“It's your friend Rachel. There was an accident. She's in hospital.”


	4. Chapter 4

Rachel? In hospital?

That didn't make sense. Rachel was an Animorph. She could heal herself if anything went wrong. It would have to be a, a coma, or a yeerk plot, or something.

The yeerks did use the hospital!

Dad explained as we drove into town. Apparently, her house had fallen in on her. I relaxed. If the yeerks suspected Rachel of something and wanted her into the hospital, they had more subtle means to achieve it than dropping a house on her. It also meant that she would be fine.

Her family, of course, were in the room by the time I got there. Her mother, looking as stern as she always did when she was worried, and her little sisters, Jordan and Sara, each fretfully gripping an arm.

And her father.

He must have flown in especially. I looked away. I know, of course, that he wouldn't recognise me as the 'andalite' who had recruited him to fight in our war – he'd known me as Cassie long before that, and if he was going to recognise me, he would have done so. He'd arrived very fast. I couldn't help but imagine him glued to the television every night, watching reports; constantly checking plane schedules in case he needed to come in because I'd told him that his daughters were in constant danger...

There were also reporters and cameramen in the room. I stayed carefully out of their way while they threw questions at Rachel and she slowly became more and more annoyed.

"How did it feel to fall into a crocodile pit, then have your house fall down on you?"

"Not very good," Rachel answered neutrally.

"Don't you think you're incredibly lucky?"

"Urn, no. If I were lucky I wouldn't keep falling. Right?"

"But you weren't hurt either time."

"I think winning the lottery would be lucky. Having the house fall on me, that's not all that lucky."

Rachel locked eyes with me, must have read the question in them, and shrugged helplessly.

"Do you have any advice for other kids like yourself?"

"Um, yes. My advice is don't fall into crocodile pits and don't have the house fall on you."

The sarcasm must have worked, because the reported began to disperse, leaving Rachel alone with her family.

“Sweetie,” her mother asked. “Are you sure you're alright?”

“Yeah,” I added. “How are you?”

She shrugged. “Fine. I'd be better if I wasn't suddenly the Amazing Falling Girl.” She shot me a glance. A 'we need to talk in private' glance.

Her mom laughed and ruffled her hair. "You are amazing, Rachel. It's a miracle you survived. I think we should all be thankful."

"Thankful? The house fell on me. The house is destroyed."

"We have insurance," her mom said. Then she grinned. "Plus we probably have the mother of all lawsuits. I mean, houses shouldn't fall apart like that. We can go after the builder, all the contractors and subcontractors, the city inspectors, the previous owners, the... "

Rachel's dad cleared his throat. "Where are you all going to stay?" he asked her mother.

"At my mom's, I guess," she said. Under her breath she added, "until the old woman drives me stark raving nuts."

He nodded in sympathy. "Look, I'm staying in town for a couple of days. I thought maybe I'd run interference for Rachel. Keep the media off her."

"They seem to have given up on this story," her mother said doubtfully.

Her dad shook his head. "Don't count on it. They were just trying to make their deadlines for the late news. This is a good human-interest story. But as a fellow reporter I might be able to warn some of them off."

That sounded like a good plan to me. The less media attention we got, the better.

"Rachel can stay with me," I piped up. "I know my mom and dad wouldn't mind."

Rachel's father winked at me. "Thanks, Cassie. Look, Rachel, I have a suite at the Fairview Hotel. Why not stay with me till this all blows over? Room service? Health club?"

"Cool! I mean, is it okay, Mom?"

She looked grumpy. "Well, it makes sense. I guess."

Rachel grinned. She grinned her terrifying 'I have a plan' grin.

"Dad? What you said about all the talk shows wanting to interview me? Wouldn't it be better if I agreed to do just one show? Then the others would let me be. Right?"

I shot her a questioning look. Where was she going with all this?

He nodded. "Yeah. But, sweetie, you don't have to do any show. I can get everyone off your back."

"I could do one, though," I said. "In fact. . . what do you think of the Barry and Cindy Sue Show? I heard they were coming to town."

"Barry and Cindy Sue?" her mom asked. "Rachel, why exactly would you want to do Barry and Cindy Sue?"

"Well, see... there's this guy. This actor... this kind of slightly cute actor..."

“An actor?” Rachel's mother frowned.

Rachel locked eyes with me. “Jeremy Jason McCole. You know, from Power House? He's coming into town to do the Barry and Cindy Sue Show here in three days' time.”

“Oh.” Rachel's dad exchanged a look with her mom. “Well, we can probably do that.”

“Great!” she said, grinning like a starstruck teenager with no concerns in the world beyond meeting her crush. “Oooh, will I have time to get my hair done first?”


	5. Chapter 5

I had to fly around the hotel for quite some time before Rachel's dad went out, leaving her alone in the room. Rachel opened a window for me, and I swept in and demorphed in a ridiculously luxurious hotel room. I was barely done when somebody knocked on the door. I jumped.

Rachel held up a hand. “It's just room service. You like pie, right?”

“Everyone likes pie.”

The waiter wheeled a small table into the room. Rachel had ordered me salad and pie. She signed the check with the air of one who did such things constantly – Rachel had stayed in hotels with her father before – and bid the waiter a friendly goodbye

I laughed when the waiter had gone. "You're going to have to be rich when you grow up, Rachel. I mean, this is all so natural for you. You fit right in."

She grinned. "I have a natural talent for spending money. What can I say? It's my burden to bear."

"Okay,” I said. “Talk to me. What happened?"

"What? You mean you don't believe that the floor of my bedroom just happened to fall in?"

“No, I don't.”

Rachel took a big bite from a burger, chewed, and swallowed. "I think I must have fallen asleep. I was clicking around some Web sites... suddenly, I was morphing into that big crocodile from today." She shrugged.

"You just started morphing?" I frowned.

"Yeah. I don't know ... I mean, I thought I was awake. But I must have been dreaming."

"Uh-uh. I dream all the time," I said. "I've never morphed in my sleep."

"Are you going to eat that salad? It cost like ten dollars."

The distraction didn't fool me. Rachel was more worried than she was letting on. I stuck a fork into the salad, but didn't take my eyes off her. "We all have nightmares and stuff. None of us has ever just started morphing."

"What can I say? That must be what happened. I must have had a nightmare."

"And you morphed the croc and it made the floor fall in?"

Rachel bit her lip nervously. "Okay, look, actually, it was my elephant morph. See, I think what happened is that maybe I just dreamed the part about morphing the crocodile. Because then I went straight into another morph, and then . . . when I woke up ... I was an elephant."

"Rachel. It's me, okay? Me. Cassie. Your best friend. I know when you're not telling the complete truth."

Rachel put her burger down and looked away. "Okay, look. I don't know what happened, all right? I was on-line, I was digging up facts on Jeremy Jason, I was getting kind of logy the way I do when I'm staring at a computer screen. Then all of a sudden I'm going crocodile."

"We have to talk to Ax about this. He's an andalite. Maybe it's some normal thing that happens sometimes."

"It better not be something that just happens," Rachel said. "I could have killed Jordan and Sara. It was just dumb luck that they were in the living room, not the kitchen."

I nodded. "We better hope it is just some normal thing. Because this is really weird, Rachel. It might be a serious problem. We need to talk to Ax."

She reached across the table and took my hand. "But not Jake, okay? He'll just get all responsible. He won't let me do anything. He'll tell me to stay home."

"That's what you should do."

"No." She shook her head. "What I need is to stay focused. The more focused I am, the less likely that will ever happen again. I'm not going to let it happen."

I watched Rachel carefully. I knew she was scared, confused, even if she hid it well. She'd always been good at hiding emotions that might make her seem weak, hiding them under a smile or charm or anger. It was how she managed to keep control of everything; look cool, look calm, look untouchable.

But before we'd become Animorphs, she'd never hidden herself from me.

I could go to Jake. I should, really. But I'd felt the same way about Jake's Amazon flashes, and while they _had_ turned out to be important, pushing him into telling everyone about them hadn't been helpful, not really. I didn't want to make the same mistake with Rachel.

I'd betrayed Rachel enough.

"Okay," I said after a while. "But we talk to Ax."

"Deal," she said.

The TV was droning on in the background. I'd not even noticed it before, but now, the sounds of one of those news entertainment shows filled the silence nicely.

“And in other news, Jeremy Jason McCole – teen idol and star of Power House – is in town, staying on a private yacht in preparation for his interview on the Barry and Cindy Sue Show later this week. His manager says – ”

Rachel and I looked at each other.

“He's here already.”

“Three days until the interview.”

“That's a really narrow window to check if he's a Controller yet.”

“Does it really matter at this point?”

Rachel bit her lip. "Probably not. I asked Jordan what she'd do if she thought there was some way she could get close to Jeremy Jason McCole. She basically said she'd walk barefoot over broken glass."

"I'm not surprised," I said. "A year ago I'd probably have been right behind her." I grinned. "Love is a powerful force."

"So? We go see Jeremy Jason on this yacht? The movie producer guy could be a Controller."

"We'll need to talk to the boys. Maybe tomorrow after school. I think that's going to be our only window."

"Jake, Marco ... all of them? You want them to come, too?"

"No. But somehow I don't think they'll exactly trust you and me alone with Jeremy Jason."

"On a yacht, huh?" Rachel mused. "He'll probably be lying out in a bathing suit."

"Mmmm."

"Mmm-hmm."

“How's your family taking this whole house thing?”

“Oh, you know my Dad. He keeps muttering about how floors shouldn't just fall in like that.”

“Well in all fairness, he's right.”

“I worry about him a little, to be honest. He never used to be this nervous. I think being a big-shot reporter is getting to him.”

“Yeah, maybe.” That or the fact that he knew his daughters were right in the invasion zone of an alien army.

“He's asking me to move with him again. Him and Mom agreed that Jordan and Sara would stay with her, but... but now he's starting to talk like...” she shrugged.

“He wants custody of your sisters?”

“Yeah. But he knows Mom will slaughter him in court if it gets that far. He knows that they have friends and school and their own lives here, and still...” she shrugged. “If he was going to miss us that much, maybe he just shouldn't have taken the job. You know?”

I ate some salad and tried not to look like I was deliberately avoiding Rachel's gaze. I should have predicted this. I should have known that the first thing he'd do would be to try to take his daughters out of the area of danger. I'd accounted for the chance that he might move _back_ , but to try to take them _away_... of course he would, though. What parent wouldn't?

And what was I supposed to do about it?

Eventually, I left Rachel to her own devices and morphed owl to go home. I didn't head straight home, though. I hovered around the building for a while, eyes to the ground, looking for a specific person. Rachel's father.

The street was largely bare when he stepped out of his taxi and headed for the hotel. I dropped right in front of him, flew past his eyes where he couldn't miss me, and swept into an alley. I turned my head around to look at him from the shadows. <Hello,> I said in my alien-protector voice.

“Oh, it's you.” He followed me into the alley. “Anything wrong?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

<She's not a Controller.>

“What?”

<Your daughter hasn't been taken by the enemy. In case you were worried about that.>

“I wasn't,” he whispered, but owls see exceptionally well in the dark. I could see the relief in his eyes.

<This does not appear to be a yeerk plot. It is simply a random accident.>

“A crocodile pit, then a house randomly falling in? I'm supposed to think that's an accident?” He licked his lips. “I lived in that house for years. There was never any evidence of any structural problems.”

<I know little about human architectural methods,> I admitted. <But I assure you that the yeerks are not targeting her. Your family is safe.>

“They'd be safer if they weren't here,” he muttered.

<Nobody is entirely safe, not anywhere. But we are protecting them. Moving them somewhere else would not protect them from cave-ins and crocodile pits,> I lied.

“You haven't sent me anybody yet.”

<Not yet. Perhaps we will never need to. But I doubt it.>

Rachel's dad nodded. “But you're sure my daughter isn't... she's okay?”

<She is okay.>

“Thank you,” he said with sudden intensity. Then he retreated from the alley and headed back upstairs to have dinner with his daughter.

I took to the sky. I had my own family to have dinner with.


	6. Chapter 6

I didn't get to talk to Rachel much at school the next day. Too many people were paying attention to her. She couldn't get between classes without somebody yelling “Hey, it's Crocodile Dundee!” or “Be careful, you'll make the school fall down.”

If it had been me, I would've been helpless and frozen in the face of taunting, but Rachel staved it off with the perfect combination of effortless charm and biting sarcasm. I don't know whether she even does it on purpose any more.

I spoke to the boys and we organized our mission: to spy on Jeremy Jason McCole on his yacht. All six of us met up at the beach after school, a somewhat out-of-place hawk and five seagulls. It had taken a little messing about to get Ax a seagull morph, but we were becoming quite adept at abducting random wildlife and stealing their DNA. I quickly lost track of the others among the seagulls flying and waddling about on the beach, but that didn't matter. If anything, it just confirmed that we blended in.

<Okay, is everyone up for this?> Jake asked. I didn't bother trying to locate him.

<Let's do it!> Rachel said, as always.

<What a shock,> Marco said sarcastically. <Mighty Xena is ready to go. Someone alert the media! It's a major story!>

<Oh, shut up, Marco,> she said.

<Okay, we fly out, find this yacht, then figure out how to proceed from there,> Jake said. <Right?>

<If we can find the yacht at all,> Marco said.

<Not a problem. It's out there, maybe three miles, heading southeast. There are three people on deck. I can't see their faces.> Tobias laughed. <Hawk vision, boys and girls. You seagulls stick to Dumpster-diving. I'll take care of long-range spying.>

<You sure it's the right boat?> Jake asked.

<The Daybreeze, right?>

<There is no way you can read the name on a boat that's three miles out,> Marco said. <I've been an osprey, remember? Your eyes are good, but you're not Superman.>

<Busted,> Tobias said. <Okay, I can't read the whole name on the boat. But I can see the D. And I took a good guess. I'm betting that's our wussy-boy actor.>

<Good enough,> Rachel said. <Let's take a closer look.> As usual, she seemed eager to get out and do something. Hopefully, in this mission, 'something' wouldn't involve ripping anyone apart.

Tobias said, <I better bail out on you guys. I'm not good over water. No thermals.>

We said good-bye to Tobias and flapped away, slowly emerging from the dogfight of seagulls in the sky. We crossed the line from sand to surf. And then we kept going, out over green water and on to the deeper blue.

There was a breeze blowing against us and it was a struggle to make headway. But this was what seagulls were built to do. The seagull brain knew how to exploit every lull in the breeze. And the body was almost tireless. We dropped low, using the cushion of air above the waves to hold us barely aloft. I let myself skim the ocean surface for little fish. There was no reason to fight it.

<How are you doing?> I asked Rachel privately as we flew.

<Fine. Chapman called me into his office today.>

<Why?! What did he want?>

<Nothing important. He thinks I'm suicidal. Recommended counseling.>

<Oh. That's... not a bad idea, actually.>

<I'm not suicidal, Cassie.>

<I know that. I just meant generally. The guy I'm seeing is pretty good.>

<Sure, I'll just go talk to a random stranger about all my problems. 'I guess I'm feeling stressed lately because I have to save the world from aliens using superpowers developed by other aliens. It's kinda dangerous, I mean one of my friends already got trapped in a hawk's body forever, so you can see how that might put a damper on things. Oh, and I turned into an elephant without meaning to and broke my house and I'm not really sure how that happened, so yeah, there's a lot on my mind.' Sure, I see that conversation happening.>

The boat came into view. I could see the name, Daybreeze, just as Tobias had said.

<Marco, Ax and I will go in close, land on the boat like any ordinary seagulls, see what we overhear,> Jake said. <Rachel and Cassie, you can be backup. Stay – >

<Yeah, right,> Rachel jeered. <You boys go. Me and Cassie stay away. Yeah, that's really going to happen. Come on, Cassie, we're going in.> She flapped hard to pull away from the boys. I followed.

The yacht was very large. I don't know how big, but it was big enough that the four people lounging on the aft deck could have played a game of volleyball if they'd wanted to. I mean, this was not some little motorboat.

Rachel and I moved behind the boat. Below us, propellers were churning the sea turquoise and white. Just ahead, we could clearly see the four people.

One was the movie producer wearing shorts and an open shirt. I'd seen him on CNN. One was a woman in a bikini. She was young and pretty. One was a slightly older man; I couldn't see his face, but he was wearing a suit. Probably a producer or an agent or something. And he was talking to...

The sunlight glinted off his hair like a beacon. There was no mistaking that face. Those lips.

<It's him!> I gasped, barely aware that I'd thought-spoken.

<Oh, yes,> Rachel agreed.

Jeremy Jason McCole. Star of Power House. At least he was the star if you forgot about that comedian guy who played his father.

Jeremy Jason McCole, who had appeared in basically every fanzine published in the last five years. Most of which Rachel had read, and I admit, I may have borrowed a few.

<His favorite color is crimson,> I said. <It's so cool. He didn't just say "red." He said "crimson.">

<He was born in Altoona, Pennsylvania.>

<He has two sisters. Their names are Jessica and Madison.>

<Nice chest.>

<Nice legs.>

<Let's get closer,> Rachel said.

We flapped a little and found ourselves in a sweet pocket of air. The boat created its own breeze, which sort of carried us along. We barely had to flap our wings. We could just hang in the air over the back end of the boat. We hung there, enjoying the view from ten feet above Jeremy Jason McCole. We listened to the conversation between the actor, the producer, and the two other people.

The wind carried some of what they said away. The noise of the churning water and the big engines wiped some of it out. But we heard enough, Rachel and I. Too much.

"... don't want to be on the losing side of this, Jeremy," the producer was saying. "Face it, your TV career is over."

"It's not over as long as... million teenage... in love with me," Jeremy said.

"All I'm saying is, big changes are coming. Big changes like... has ever seen before, okay? Now, my company is part of the new order. You do business... parts in movies. Serious parts. Let you move beyond teenage roles."

Jeremy Jason laughed. "That'd be nice. I'm about sick to death of dopey... sending me love letters and mobbing me for autographs. See, that's part of the problem I have with your offer. You'll have me still... I'm sick of... be Mr. Goody Good all the time."

Then the other man, the one who had been standing with his back to us, stepped forward. He barely flicked a finger and the producer backed away. The woman in the bikini narrowed her eyes and seemed to shrink down in her chair.

"Let's stop wasting time," the man said. "We've been talking... yesterday... better things to do. I can give you... thing you want. Everything. Money... power. But first, you have to agree to my...They are... simple. You become one of us. And then, you take on this... representing The Sharing. In exchange... anything and everything your heart desires."

Jeremy Jason sat silently while the man spoke. The man scared him. That was obvious. When Jeremy Jason did speak, it was in a low, strained voice. "And if I say no?"

"You won't say no," the man said. He turned then, and I saw his face. I saw an icy smile, and cold, dead eyes.

It wasn't a face we saw very often. But it wasn't a face that could be easily forgotten.

<Visser Three!> I hissed, as if there was any chance Rachel wouldn't notice.

Visser Three, who we'd watched eat Elfangor alive the first time we saw him. Who had tried, on more than one occasion, to eat us.

I for one wasn't happy about him being so close to Jeremy Jason. I wasn't happy about him being close to anyone.

He smiled his icy, fake-human smile for Jeremy Jason. "You're an ambitious... You want... So much more than you will ever get without my help."

Suddenly Jeremy Jason laughed. "I guess you see through me." He stood up to face the frightening man. "I agree to this little arrangement... make me a major movie star. Deal?"

The cold smile reappeared. "Deal."

<He can't possibly know what this means,> I pointed out, trying to squash the hollow feeling in my heart. <He doesn't know what they do, what he's letting them do to the planet. They've tricked him.>

<Yeah. They have,> Rachel said angrily. <But you know what? He wouldn't be falling for it unless he was a creep.>

<We can't let them make Jeremy Jason a Controller,> I said dispassionately.

<No, we'll have to try and save him,> Rachel agreed. <But now I wonder if he's worth it.>

I knew what she meant. All this time, I'd sort of been assuming that Jeremy Jason was on, well, our side. That we'd have to monitor him and either free him from the thing in his head like we did with Jake, or mount a daring rescue to prevent them putting a yeerk in there in the first place. We might have to do the your-planet-is-in-danger thing we'd done with Melissa, and that I had done with Rachel's dad. But...

But this was a stupid kid toying with forces he didn't understand, for, for what? Power? 'I'm so great, look at all the teenage girls in love with me... sure, I'll sell them out to whatever stupid thing you want me to endorse and get into this vaguely explained 'arrangement', for _more fame_.' Whatever we tried to do, he wouldn't be on our side. He wanted to be famous.

<Let's get back with Jake and Marco,> Rachel said. <Man. They are so going to rag on us over this. Jeremy Jason ready to become a voluntary Controller. It's disgusting.>

Se banked sharply away, catching the headwind. The journey back should, at least, be easier than the journey out. I followed her, but we'd barely turned away from the boat when Rachel started to drop. Her feathers began disappearing, and her body bulged oddly.

<Rachel! What are you doing?> I yelled.

<l don't know! I can't seem to fly!>

<You're morphing, Rachel! Stop!>

Something long and gray was sprouting from Rachel's face, replacing her beak. <I'm growing a trunk!> she cried.

From their positions a hundred yards behind the boat, Jake, Marco and Ax spotted the disaster-in-the-making.

<Rachel! What are you doing?> Jake yelled.

<l can't stop! I can't stop! I'm morphing!>

A strange amalgamation of elephant and bird, Rachel hit the water with a splash. I flew forward, wheeled over the spot where she'd fallen... and saw, back on the boat, Visser Three watching us.

He said something and quickly vanished below deck.

This wasn't going to be good.

<Rachel! Morph out!> I screamed. <I'm going after her.>

<Everyone in the water,> Jake said. <But don't be seen!>

I dropped under the waves, which was actually harder than it sounds, because seagulls tend to float. Once I started demorphing, though, sinking wasn't a problem. Feathers melted, fingers sprouted, and I grew. Lungs expanded with no air to draw into them; salt water burned my throat and I kicked for the surface, spluttering. But which way was up? Where was, well, anything?

I struggled to breathe, but there was water, only water, and my lungs didn't seem to work right anyway. Birds and humans have very different lung structures. I had no choice; I had to finish the morph and... and then deal with the water in my lungs, somehow.

I was going to drown. After everything, I was going to drown on a routine surveillance mission.

And I hadn't even gotten to meet Jeremy Jason.

I tried to see through the water, tried to see light or the boat or anything, really, but there was no difference in the chaotic rush and movement around me. Save air, save air... stop thrashing. With effort, I forced myself to stay still, but it was way too late, I knew that. I couldn't _breathe_. I focused on Cassie, defeated. I grew. My arm bones thickened, changed shape. My body wracked in involuntary coughs, pulling salt water further into my lungs. I could hear my own pulse, loud and out-of-place, pressing against my eardrums.

Ears...

_Three bones. Anvil, hammer, stirrup. Once a support structure for our ancestor's gills, migrated upwards to control tension of..._

Gills!

How much of me was human? Enough? Would it work? I'd done combined morphs before, but I was so tired... it hurt, it was so hard to focus...

I focused on the eel inside me. I focused on the head and throat of the eel.

I could feel my jaw changing shape. Yes! Yes! I could feel my teeth grinding; for a moment, my mouth was forced open, but it was already full of water. My eyes started to migrate outwards. My legs began merging, and I stopped them; I didn't need any of that, I just needed...

My ears popped as the tiny bones moved within them, moved downward and merged with some of the cartilage in my neck. Gills sprouted.

Yes!

I pumped water over them, wonderful water, and the ache within me lessened. I was able to focus, to find the surface and head there, pushing my mouth above the waves while I focused on making my body below the neck human. It was somewhat fortunate, I supposed, that my hybrid human/bird lungs hadn't worked very well; there wasn't nearly as much water in them as there could have been. I dragged breaths into my new, human lungs, then let myself sink and finished demorphing.

Dolphins were very similar to humans, compared to birds or eels. I felt my legs merge together, felt my face bulge out. Felt my windpipe change position so that I could breathe through the back of my neck, which seemed like a comparatively small change. One I was a dolphin, I dove, letting off a series of echolocating clicks. The world around me sprang into relief, illuminated in sound.

Something below me, far deeper than I liked. A thrashing bulk. Elephant.

<Jake, I see her!> I dove.

But... no. Rachel was changing shape, her flesh melting and shrinking.

<Jake, she's demorphing!> I reported.

<Get her air and don't let the Visser see her!> he responded, as if I needed to be told.

Rachel's trunk disappeared. Her face elongated. The...texture... of the sound reverberating from her body changed; no longer rubbery and pliable, now tough and unyielding.

<I see her, Prince Jake,> Ax reported. <I think... I think she is going straight into another morph.>

<That's impossible!>

<I know!>

Rachel was shrinking. She was shrinking very, very quickly. There was a shark, swimming fitfully but helplessly to one side – Ax. There was Rachel, rapidly becoming difficult to locate. And there was me. I darted for her.

<Oh what fun it is to morph, to morph and morph today. Hey!>

<Is she singing "Jingle Bells"?> Marco demanded.

Rachel became too small to see, too small to echolocate, at least for a dolphin. I stopped swimming. She was something small and fragile; I didn't want to crush her if I got too close.

<Ax? Cassie? I think... I think I went into termite morph!> Rachel cried. <Nobody swallow anything. It could be me.>

<Are you okay?> I asked, like an idiot.

<You mean aside from the fact that I'm in termite morph, trapped inside an air bubble in the middle of the ocean?> she replied sarcastically. <Yeah, aside from all that, I'm great.>

<Uh-oh,> Marco said.

<Uh-oh what!> Jake snapped.

<Uh-oh, there's an andalite in the water. Mostly andalite. Rapidly turning into something else.>

<Visser Three!> Ax exclaimed.

<Thanks, Ax-man, I think we were all able to figure that out.> Even as Marco responded, I felt the aura of dread that he carried with him seep into my bones. He might've stopped broadcasting it while he was playing producer, but now, all bets were off.

<What is it? What's he morphing?>

<l don't know what it is. But it's big and it looks like it could swim.>

<Oh, man! Can anything else go wrong?!> Jake yelled in frustration. <Rachel, can you demorph? Can you get human? Or dolphin? Or something useful?>

<I don't know!>

<Rachel,> I said, <calm down and focus.>

Something above me! Something near the surface! I darted closer.

<I think I see her!> I reported. <No, wait. Just seaweed. No, wait again. I do see her. She's green, maybe half an inch long but growing fast.>

<Rachel, what are you morphing?> Jake asked.

<Why don't you tell me? Because, guess what? I DON'T KNOW!>

<Stay cool, Rachel,> Jake advised.

<Cool? Cool? Hey, sorry if I sound tense, but I keep turning into things I don't want to turn into.>

<It's the crocodile!> I said. I could see the others; a pair of dolphins. They had to be able to see me. <Jake, over here. This way.>

Rachel pushed her newly formed snout above the water line to suck in a deep breath. Crocodiles can hold their breath for a long time.

Three dolphins. A tiger shark. A crocodile that may change into something else at any moment. And somewhere, somewhere out of my sight, Visser Three.

<We need to leave,> I said.

<No argument here,> Marco said.

<I guess maybe I should have mentioned I was having this little problem with morphing, huh?> Rachel sounded embarrassed.

<No, it's much better to find out this way, Rachel,> Jake replied. <You know – when you could get us all killed.>

<Guys?> Marco said. <Does anybody know where the Visser is?>

<Let's get out of here while we can,> Jake said. <Rachel, if you feel any more morphing happening, tell us, all right? If you don't mind.>

<Yell at me later, okay? Let's get some distance.>

We turned. We swam. We quickly passed Rachel. Jake stopped and looked back.

<Alligators aren't exactly fast swimmers, are they?>

<Crocodiles,> I corrected him. <And no. I guess not.>

Then we heard...

PUH-WHUMPF!

It was a sound like a depth charge. Like something very large had just cannonballed into the water.

<Here he comes,> Marco announced grimly. <Oh look, he has spears. They'll be fun.>

I spun and set off an echolocating click. What came back was, frankly, bizarre.

It looked like a vast, sort of spongy stingray. Like a living pancake, flat and oblong. It sort of flew through the water by slowly flapping its sides. There were two stalk-mounted eyes on top, and two long, trailing antennae below.

All along its back it had spears. They were lined up flat. You know how a fighter jet has missiles tucked up under the wings? That's how it held the spears, only they were on top. But all neatly in a row, facing forward. The spears - there must have been twenty of them - were each as long as a broom handle and just about as thick. And pointed. Very pointed. With what looked like little barbs.

<Ah!> Ax said, speaking up. <I think it's a Lebtin javelin fish! I've always wanted to see one of those. I mean.. you know... in a zoo or something.>

<Well, we can't outrun it with Rachel in alligator morph,> Jake said.

<Crocodile,> I said. <Not alligator.>

<You guys get out of here. I'll take care of Visser Three,> Rachel said. <It's my fault we're in this mess.>

<Yeah, right, Rachel,> Jake said. Then he began rapid-fire orders. <Spread out. Thirty feet apart. Keep moving so he doesn't get an easy target. And for future reference, I don't give a rat's butt if it's a crocodile or an alligator, so long as it can fight.>

We all rose briefly for a fresh breath. We were going to need it.

Visser three darted forward.

He flew through the water. Faster than a crocodile. Also faster than a dolphin or shark.

<Fast,> Jake said.

<Yep,> I agreed.

<Probably not all that agile, though,> he suggested.

<No. It will be slow in a turn.>

<I've changed my mind,> Ax said. <I do not think I want to see a Lebtin javelin fish.> Well, Ax seemed to be getting the hang of human humor. So that was something.

We'd all lined up, not entirely consciously, to back up Rachel. I was to her right, Ax was to her left. Marco and Jake were behind us. The javelin fish was about a hundred yards away, and I think we were all thinking some combination of _oh god we're going to die_ and _Rachel don't you dare start morphing again._

Then...

The javelin fish - Visser Three - began to swell up. It seemed to inflate like a balloon. It slowed... slowed...

SHOOOOOOP!

A spear fired from the javelin fish's mouth. Faster than I could follow, it lanced through the water. It lanced through Rachel's tail.

<AHHHHHHH!>

Blood clouded the water. But it didn't obscure the spear, sticking right through Rachel. She struggled, kicked feebly. Her tail didn't move right.

<Rachel!>

<Hah-HAH!> Visser Three exulted. <It works! I just acquired this morph, and look how well it performs!>

For a second, I had an insane vision of Visser Three strolling down the well-tended paths of some alien version of The Gardens, perhaps Ax's javelin-fish-containing zoo, for a relaxing evening of morph acquisition.

I looked at Visser Three. One of the spears stored on his back rolled neatly into a flap. Then he began to swell again, ready to fire another spear.

<Look out! Move! Move!> Jake howled in our heads.

SHOOOOOOP!

The second spear flew straight for me. I kicked hard to dodge; the spear almost missed.

My back burned, as if I'd been laid open to the spine. I probably had. I tried not to think about it.

<I'm okay, I'm okay!> I cried.

The javelin fish was still rushing at us. Rachel rolled onto her back, pale belly up. <Jake! Back off. Get out of here. It's too fast! You have to split up and hope you lose him!>

<I'm not leaving you!>

<You have to. I'll play dead. And if he comes close enough...>

He hesitated, but only for a second longer. <Split up! Run for it!>

<I'm not leaving Rachel!> I said firmly.

<Cassie, you have to,> Rachel said in her I-know-what-I'm-doing voice. <Now! Get out of here or we'll all be dead!>

Visser Three flew toward us, gliding swiftly through the water. I saw a new spear roll into the flap. He began to swell, sucking in the water he used to propel the spear.

<He's getting ready again. You guys, GET OUT OF HERE!>

We wheeled sharply away and made a dash for it. Three dolphins and a shark outrunning an alien spear-throwing fish while our crocodile friend played dead.

SHOOOOOOP!

The spear raced after Ax! He was a hundred feet away and moving at full shark speed. But the spear gained swiftly.

<Now, Ax! Now!> Rachel yelled.

He swerved right, and the spear blew past.

<Thank you, Rachel,> Ax said.

The Visser hesitated. <Ah, splitting up, eh? Well, that will only affect the order in which I kill each of you. What have ! heard the human children say? Ah yes, eeny, meeny, miney, moo.>

We were lined up so that Rachel was almost directly between me and Visser Three. Marco, Ax and Jake had fled in varying direction, spreading out; if he went for any of them, he wouldn't pass close to Rachel. She could wait until he was past, demorph, and try to catch up later, but with all of us fleeing at top speed and with the Visser as fast as he was, she'd never find us in time to do any good. None of us had a morph fast enough to beat that thing, or time to morph it. Our only chance was Rachel, surprise attacking from the dead. And that meant the Visser needed to pass within her reach. And that meant he needed to go for me first.

The logical thing for him to do, of course, would be to go after the fastest or most dangerous first, to lessen the chance of anybody escaping. But I knew the Visser better than that. I knew that he liked his prey scared, helpless. He liked to run somebody down, watch them tremble in exhaustion and pain until they could no longer fight.

So I did what I'd been teaching myself not to do since we'd started fighting the war.

I focused on the wound on my back, and I let the pain win. I surrendered to pain and fear, and put my trust in Rachel's jaws.

I shuddered as I swam, and felt my own strokes weaken. I hoped none of the boys would notice, or if they did, they wouldn't try to help me.

Visser Three flapped his water wings. He darted forward.

He darted towards me.

Rachel rolled, jaws snapped.

Did you know a crocodile has some of the most powerful jaws in the animal kingdom? Did you know they can practically crush rocks with their jaws?

Rachel bit down.

POOOOMPFF!

SPWOOOOSH!

The inflated javelin fish exploded. All the water it had sucked in to fire its next spear went blasting out through the hole Rachel made.

That Lebtin javelin fish learned a whole new way to fly. It squirted wildly through the water, blasted up through the surface, arced through the air like a sick dolphin, and landed far away with a loud, satisfying splash.

And the whole time, we heard Visser Three's thought-speak voice crying, <Ahhhhhhhhhhh!>

We rushed forward to help keep Rachel afloat. Visser Three might be back, but he would need to demorph to heal first. And Rachel was already partly demorphed. By the time he got back, we'd be gone.

<That was fun,> Rachel said, only half-joking.

<Uh-huh,> Marco said. <Let's never, ever do it again.>


	7. Chapter 7

“So,” Jake said, in a silky tone that meant he was one small irritation away from exploding, “this is the second time you've had trouble with your morphing? And you didn't think to tell anyone?” We'd gathered in Ax's meadow for an emergency meeting. Both Tobias and Ax needed to eat, and they couldn't do that in my barn. So, Ax walked in slow circles as we talked, and Tobias perched on a nearby tree, scanning the grass for rodents.

“I thought it was a one-off thing,” Rachel said, omitting the minor point that she had, in fact, told me. “I didn't think it was a big deal.”

“Your house fell on you.”

“Lots of stuff has fallen on me since this Animorph thing started.”

Jake sucked air in through his teeth. He seemed to be buying Rachel's nonchalant act, and it seemed to be making him angrier.

“I guess the question is,” I interjected quickly, “what do we do about it? Is it contagious? Is there a cure? Is Rachel in danger?”

We all looked at Ax.

<I can only think of one thing that would cause such symptoms, although I am not an expert in humans,> he pointed out. <It is not contagious. It sounds like an allergy.>

I frowned. “An allergy?”

<To a morph. Sometimes the anchorage rejects specific forms. You have acquired an animal that you're allergic to.>

"This out-of-control morphing is an allergy? I have an allergy? To what?"

"What was the last animal you acquired?" I asked. Then I answered my own question. "The crocodile. You must be allergic to crocodiles."

“This is ridiculous,” Rachel muttered.

“Unlike everything else about this war, which makes complete sense,” Marco added mildly.

"You're saying because I acquired that crocodile I lost control of my morphing powers?"

<Not all control. Just some. It's... it's like when you humans suddenly make violent exhalations through your nostrils and shout, "Achoo!">

"Sneezing. You're saying I've been sneezing."

<Yes. Your body is trying to expel the foreign DNA.>

"Well that's just great. So what do I do? Is there some medicine I can take or something?"

<No medicine. At least none that humans could create. But there is a process. Something that happens naturally in these cases. At least it happens to andalites. It's called _hereth illint_. >

"That sounds poetic," I said.

<A literal translation would be something like "burping DNA.">

"Now that's poetry," Marco said, laughing.

Even Jake smiled. "How does Rachel do it? This process?" he asked Ax.

<The offending DNA will eventually be expelled from your system. You can't control when it happens. You just have to be careful, especially since this crocodile is a dangerous creature.>

"Sounds easy enough," Rachel said. "I'm always careful."

<Aha!> Tobias had spotted something. He dove into the grass and, a moment later, flapped back up into his tree with something small and furry in his claws.

<It isn't easy. See, you basically have to morph the animal while you retain your own body. You have to create a whole, living animal out of the excess matter floating in Zero-space.>

"Excuse me?"

<Until the _hereth illint_ begins, you can control some of the symptoms by remaining very calm and unemotional. The out-of-control morphing in the water happened when you were upset or emotional. >

Rachel shrugged. "I was mad because that jerk Jeremy Jason McTraitor was betraying his fans. Not to mention his entire species, yeah."

<And the first time? When you morphed inside your house? What emotion were you feeling then?>

"Nothing." Rachel's face was blank.

"What were you doing when it started?" Jake asked.

"I don't remember," Rachel said neutrally.

I cocked an eyebrow at her. "Rachel, you were pulling up pictures of Jeremy Jason off the Internet."

"So?" she demanded. "That's not something emotional!"

"It was l-o-o-o-v-e," Marco crowed, drawing the word out. "The deadly, dangerous emotion of puppy love. Rachel was overcome by attraction! By desire! By intense, uncontrollable Tiger Beat passion! And it – "

He was interrupted by Rachel, trying to grab and choke him. But he dodged behind Ax, who looked unsure of how to handle the situation. Ax glanced at Jake, who provided no guidance because, like me, he was too busy pretending not to laugh.

"It turned her into a wild animal!" Marco yapped on. "Several wild animals, actually. She became the alligator of l-o-o-o-v-e!"

"It's crocodile," Jake said, smirking in a most un-Jakelike way.

A feather pattern began to spread across Rachel's arms.

<You see?> Ax said, noticing the beginning of the morph. <Passions and emotions set off the allergic reaction. You must try to eliminate the emotions.>

"How about if I just eliminate Marco?" she growled.

"It's so perfect," Marco said. "Mighty Xena has a weakness: human emotion. She's a victim of l-o-o-o-v-e."

Jake grabbed Marco's arm and squeezed tight. "Marco, if you make her mad, she'll morph. And if she starts morphing, she might end up in full grizzly bear. Do you really want Rachel mad at you and in grizzly bear morph?"

Marco hesitated. He glanced at Rachel. He bit his lip. "I get your point, Jake. I think I'll just go watch Tobias eat his mouse."

Rachel was halfway feathered by the time she was able to get a grip and reverse the morph. I think we all breathed a quiet sigh of relief.

"Ax, tell Rachel whatever you can about this _hereth_ thing. Get her prepared. And Rachel, until you are better, keep a very low profile. As in, don't go to school. Don't do anything. You're off all future missions until this allergy thing is over. Next time, I expect you to tell us when you're unfit for duty before we all nearly get killed over it.”

I quickly changed the subject. “What about this Jeremy Jason McCole thing? How do we proceed?”

<He'll be a Controller by now,> Tobias said from the trees. He had finished his mouse and was scanning the grass once more.

“Not necessarily,” Marco said. “I mean, he didn't see anything on the boat, right?”

“Probably not,” Jake said. “But would the yeerks take that chance? They want to infest him anyway.”

“I meant, Visser Three went out of his way to make sure he didn't see anything,” Marco continued. “He morphed in the water.”

<And seawater is not a pleasant thing to ingest,> Ax put in, absently shaking a hoof as if in memory.

“When they were trying the logging thing, they didn't care what that inspector saw. They were going to infest him anyway. So why the caution here?”

“I don't know,” Jake frowned. “But we can't assume – ”

“We can't assume anything.”

“We have about two days before his TV appearance,” I pointed out. “That isn't enough time to starve a yeerk.”

Jake nodded. “Alright then. Tobias, Ax, Marco and I will take shifts observing him. If we have to make him miss his TV appearance, then so be it. Cassie, you're backup for Rachel in case something goes wrong.”

I didn't look at Rachel. We all knew that 'backup', in this case, meant 'jailer'. Jake wanted me to keep an eye on Rachel, keep her out of trouble.

I wanted to stick up for my friend. But what was I supposed to say?

“Anything else?” Jake asked. When nobody said anything, he said, “Right, I'm going home then. My parents will ground me if I keep coming in after dark.”

Everybody disbanded. As we walked back toward civilization, Jake matched his steps with mine. He waited until everybody else was out of earshot before muttering, “Keep an eye on her, alright?”

We exchanged a glance. There was worry in his eyes. Worry for his cousin.

“I don't know what you expect me to do,” I said.

“Keep her calm, like Ax said. And out of danger. You know what she's like.”

“Brave?”

“Exactly. Willing to throw herself at a meat grinder without a second thought if she thought if could help protect someone. So keep her away from meat grinders. She listens to you.”

“Rachel doesn't listen to anyone,” I said doubtfully. “She does what she wants.”

Jake smiled a small smile. “She listens to you,” he said.


	8. Chapter 8

After everyone had left, I went to my box of notes buried under the tree. It was getting pretty full, and I was considering adding a second box – fortunately, the barn seemed to have an endless supply of durable, waterproof containers. For the moment, though, I settled down with the one, balancing a torch in the knot of a tree so that I could see what I was writing.

I wrote down the obvious stuff, noting Rachel's allergy, the symptoms we'd observed, and the resolution Ax had explained. I also took notes on the Lebtin javelin fish, although Visser Three never seemed to repeat morphs so there was little point.

Which raised an interesting point in itself, actually, regarding the potential morph limit: namely, Visser Three, who was in the body of an andalite a lot older and more experienced than Ax, didn't seem to be concerned about one. Did that mean that the morphs we could acquire were functionally unlimited? I noted my logic down, but it probably wasn't a good idea to gamble on such a possibility. While I had the box open, I noted Ax's new seagull morph onto the morph list.

I was just stalling, though. I was avoiding thinking about the thing that I didn't want to think about, but I had to think about it because a long time ago I'd decided that knowledge was good and that I would not allow myself to be afraid of it. Even if it was knowledge I didn't like.

I gritted my teeth, pulled out a piece of fresh paper, and titled it _Why Am I Acting So Stupid?_

Because I was, really. And denying it wouldn't help. Why had I kept Rachel's secret? Why hadn't I at least tried to convince her to talk to the others? I'd convinced her to talk to Ax, sure, but then we'd gone on a mission and she hadn't done it yet and I hadn't pushed the issue at all. Why? Because Ax would just tell Jake? Wasn't that a good thing? Knowledge was good, after all, right? Not too long ago, I'd pushed Jake into telling everybody things he didn't want to tell, on the off-chance it was some telepathic message.

I'd told myself, later, that that had been the wrong choice and that maybe that was why I'd backed off so easily with Rachel. But I knew that wasn't right. There was a huge difference between 'disturbing dreams and hallucinations that are probably a normal reaction to the stuff we see every day' and 'random, seemingly impossible morphing'. I should have dug harder. I mean, morphing out of control? Going straight from one morph to another? That raised all kinds of questions. If it was possible to do in a 'sneeze', why wasn't it possible normally? Was it deliberately forbidden by the technology, because it somehow _made_ morphing unstable? How? And if not... what caused the limitation, if it could so easily vanish? Was it some kind of mental barrier, because we thought of ourselves as human, or was it unavoidable?

How could one be allergic to a morph? Obviously, being allergic to a specific DNA sequence made no sense, It had to be something else, something about the technology.

Why hadn't I asked any of these questions of Rachel? Why had I just accepted what she'd said, agreed not to tell anyone, and moved on? That wasn't like me at all. I always asked questions or, if it wasn't polite, at least tried to think of other ways to get answers. I didn't just... back down. What was wrong with me?

I knew the answer to that, of course. It was unavoidable.

She was staying with her father.

Her father. The man I'd set up as some kind of external agent. Who I had put in... well, not much danger, but some. Who I'd brought in. Without telling her. Without asking her.

And now he was... there, like some kind of accusation. I couldn't really resent that. I mean, loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night, right? His presence made it harder for me to ignore or deny something that was real; that wasn't a bad thing. The fact that I wanted to ignore it suggested that my decision had been a bad thing.

Of course, I couldn't trust my emotions to know what the right thing to do was, necessarily. Just because I felt bad didn't mean it was a bad strategy. But nor could I ignore them. And I certainly couldn't let them rule my future decisions. I mean, what was I trying to do, pay Rachel back with extra trust? Did I think that being a doormat now would somehow make her _less_ angry if – when – she found out about her father? I had to keep my head in the war. I had to keep my focus.

Maybe I had wronged Rachel. Maybe I hadn't. But that was no reason to start making compensatory bad decisions. People would get killed that way. We'd all nearly died in the ocean, and they'd blamed Rachel; but I could have stopped it just as easily. It was just as much my fault.

Probably _more_ my fault, because somewhere along the line, keeping the team together had become more my problem than Rachel's.

I stared down at the paper in front of me. Except for the title, I hadn't written a single thing. I sighed and started to pack up.


	9. Chapter 9

“I just... she's being stupid and reckless about this, this thing, and... and I don't know how to help her without stepping on her toes, you know? Without looking like I'm interfering.”

Mr. Johnson held up a hand. “This is a different friend to the one you thought you betrayed last time?”

“Yeah.”

“And you don't want to make the same mistake again?”

“Something like that.”

“Cassie... this friend of yours, is she on drugs?”

I remained silent, staring at Mr. Johnson's desk. It was a very nice desk.

“It's okay, you don't have to tell me. But drugs can mess with people's ability to make decisions. If that's the problem, your friend might not be able to think properly for herself. If something's altering her ability to reason...”

“Nothing's altering her ability to reason, she's just naturally... you know.”

“Reckless?”

“Protective.”

Mr. Johnson frowned. “I don't entirely understand.”

“It's okay. I shouldn't have brought this to you. I'm sorry.” I stood to leave.

“Cassie, please.” Mr. Johnson put a hand out, as if he was going to stop me. He didn't touch me, but still, I sat down. “My job is to help you. I won't be able to solve all your problems, but I can help you understand what the world does to you. I can't help your friend; at least, not this way. If you could have her visit me, I might be able to help her. But it's not your responsibility to look after her. It's your responsibility to look after you.”

I almost laughed. When the world is falling to alien invaders, looking after oneself seemed... petty. No; my responsibility to myself was to stay well enough to fight. My responsibility to the other Animorphs was the same. If Rachel broke and got herself killed, how was that any better than me getting myself killed? It wasn't. It was worse, even. She was a better Animorph than me, she'd been better at being a normal person than me... and she was my friend.

But I didn't get up again.

“Sometimes it's hard,” I said carefully. “When so many people have so many problems...”

“People need to rely on each other sometimes,” Mr. Johnson said. “You're being there for your friends. That's good. But is anybody there for you?”

I blinked. “Of course. They're there for me as much as I am for them.”

“I'm sure they want to be. But can they? Are they in a position to help you, really?”

I looked away. Rachel could take a hork-bajir blade for me, but she couldn't understand what I meant when I said it was important to protect the biodiversity of the planet as much as our own species. Jake could give me a reassuring smile and a direction to head in, but he never really understood just what I meant when I asked how much of our violence was justified. The only one who came close to understanding was Tobias, and he was a hawk, with his own hawk problems. Besides, we weren't really... close enough to have those conversations on a regular basis.

“I know you're a good person,” Mr. Johnson continued. “A great person. You need – you _deserve_ – support, in order to be the best that you can be. And frankly, I think if the world had more people like you, it'd be a better place.”

“You're paid to say things like that,” I muttered.

“I'm paid to help children. I don't believe lies are helpful. I will never, ever lie to you in this classroom, Cassie.”

I nodded non-committally.

“You want details? Fine. I first learned that you were special when I asked about your dreams.”

That surprised me enough to make me look up and meet his eyes. “My nightmares convinced you I was special?”

“No. The way you described them. When you ask somebody about a nightmare, they tell you what scared them. That's what makes it a nightmare.”

“Yeah...”

“You told me your nightmares were about hurting people. Then you clarified that they were threatening you, threatening your friends.”

“They are.”

“Exactly.” Mr. Johnson smiled. “Most people would describe that nightmare as somebody trying to hurt them, because that's the most scary thing for most people. You didn't. You said your nightmares were about you hurting people.”

“I... I guess.”

Mr. Johnson reached across the desk and cupped one of my hands in his. I didn't pull away. “Cassie, what you need is a strong network that will be there for you, people to help you be your best... and to help you help your friends. You need people around you who are outside this problem your friend has, people who can help you protect her, or more accurately, help her protect herself. I happen to be involved in this wonderful group that does exactly that; we look out for each other, help each other to reach our full potential, to become part of something greater. And I really think you should check it out. It might be exactly what you're looking for.

“It's called The Sharing.”


	10. Chapter 10

I guess it was a good thing that I'd gone completely rigid. It meant I didn't pull away. I didn't want to make things awkward.

Mr. Johnson frowned. “Cassie?”

I wasn't breathing. But that wasn't important. I'd nearly drowned demorphing from seagull and had to use a complicated series of half-morphs to stay alive, just yesterday. Ten seconds without air was nothing.

“Cassie? Are you okay?”

I forced myself to swallow. Forced myself to meet his eyes. Forced myself to take a breath. “Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine.” I looked into those honest, earnest eyes and for just one moment, entertained the possibility of testing his word. What would happen if I said 'Hey, by the way, what's with this vaccine pipeline thing with the hospital? And while we're talking about the invasion, is Jeremy Jason a Controller yet?' What would happen? Would he break his word and lie to me?

Instead, I said, “I think I've heard about them. I'll ask my friend, maybe we can go together.”

He broke into a wide smile. “Wonderful. I really do think this is the best for you, Cassie. I think with some proper support, you can lift your grades and make all your old worries disappear.”

 _Yeah, because they'd seem meaningless in comparison to new worries, like being an alien's puppet and watching it use my abilities to take over my planet._ “Thanks, Mr. Johnson. This has really helped me.”

“Glad to help, Cassie.”

“I should probably get home. 'Bye!” I walked out, breathing. And smiling. And I didn't trip over my own feet even once.

Then I bolted to my locker, grabbed my belongings, and got out of there.

I've never been much of a runner. I admit, I've always neglected my body in favor of my brain. I mean, I was kinda strong and reasonably fit for a bookworm, because I lifted heavy things and walked a lot when helping my dad, but I was no sportswoman. I was no runner.

I'd flown full-tilt for longer than any osprey should have to, Dracon fire burning the woods behind me. My lungs had burned under the ocean while I forced myself to focus. I'd had blades slice through half the muscles supporting my leg and forced the rest to do twice the work while I kept fighting.

The air tearing my throat raw, the stabbing pain in my legs and abdomen, the feeling that my heart was about to give out? Barely noticeable in comparison.

This whole Animorph thing might actually be a great way to get fit. I could push myself beyond my old limits, back when things like pain and discomfort were important. I could do four, maybe five times the amount of exercise.

Hooray, silver lining.

I went to Rachel's hotel room. It wasn't technically within walking distance, but 'walking distance' is just a measure of will. Humans, properly fit humans that is, are actually capable of walking the same distance as hunting dogs. This isn't a coincidence – we evolved that way, hunting together for thousands of years. Eventually I did have to stop running and slow to a walk, and by the time I got in the elevator, I was barely out of breath any more.

I told Rachel what had happened, of course. She was gracious enough not to tease me about it, or mention that I'd been trying to make her see Mr. Johnson.

“So,” she said, stirring a spoon idly through a tub of yoghurt, “are you going to keep seeing him?”

I stared at her. “No! Why would I?”

She shrugged. “I don't know. I thought maybe you'd have a Cassie reason. Like, maybe he's still useful in some way and you've got some way to make the Controller part not matter.”

“I'm pretty sure he's just going to keep pushing me into the sharing. If I don't get out now, not going along will just seem suspicious.”

Rachel spooned yoghurt into her mouth. “I guess this explains why Chapman wanted me to get counseling, huh.”

I nodded. “Some of the other teachers started recommending it for me earlier in they year, too. Eventually Chapman phoned my parents and, well, it was counseling or summer school.”

“I think I remember Marco saying something about a teacher wanting him to see a counselor,” Rachel said. “Of course, he turned it into a joke.”

“You know,” I said slowly, “I've been wondering why the yeerks seem to concentrate so much on a random high school, why one of their really high-ranking Controllers is a vice principal instead of a, a judge or a police chief or a rich guy. I think we may have just figured it out.”

“Teenagers,” Rachel continued. “So many teenagers, at a confusing and emotional time of their lives, all packed together under stress and being taught boring stuff they're not supposed to complain about...”

“... anyone looks like cracking under the stress, or looks like they could do with support of any kind, the school offers a nice little service to take the stress off and make them feel better about themselves...” I added, a bitter taste in my mouth. I couldn't help but remember all the little things Mr. Johnson had told me, all the little tips and positive comments. They'd seemed so helpful at the tie, but now I saw them for what they were – slimy little worms to bait a hook, lies to butter up a teenaged girl too dumb to know better. I should have seen it coming a mile away. It seemed so obvious now.

“... and they get sent to the nice, strong support network of The Sharing,” Rachel finished our collective thought.

“Bam; instant, never-ending line of voluntary Controllers,” I added hollowly. If I hadn't known about the yeerks, I would have fallen for it. I definitely would have fallen for it. Admittedly I wouldn't be under quite so much stress without the yeerks, but the school could basically set a stress level to whatever they wanted by simply controlling the amount and difficulty of the work. I got up and started pacing. “We have to tell the boys. You know, after we deal with this whole Jeremy Jason McCole thing.”

Rachel watched me for a bit. “Could you stop pacing, please? It's making me tense.”

“Sorry.” I sat back down and shot her a smile. “I think you're doing really well, by the way.”

“Thanks.” She held up her tub. “The secret is low fat yoghurt.” I was pretty sure she was only half joking.

“You wanna... watch a movie or something?”

“Aren't movies designed to make people feel things?”

“We could watch a really bad movie.”

“I'd only get angry at how bad it was.” Rachel sighed. “Monopoly?”

“Monopoly makes everyone angry. Everyone.”

“You know what we could do? We could tail this Mr. Johnson. See if he does anything, I don't know, weird.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “Okay, first point... what's he going to do that's weird? If his job is to steer kids to The Sharing, then what's he likely to be doing after hours? I mean, he might go to the yeerk pool, but – ”

“Exactly! He might show us a new entrance! We could stake it out!”

“The last time I tried to 'stake out' a yeerk pool entrance I got captured and nearly had to commit suicide. Oh yeah, and Tobias got trapped as a hawk.”

Rachel sat up. “We could go visit Tobias! I mean, assuming he's not following Jeremy Jason right now.”

I frowned at the sudden light in her eyes, the flush in her cheeks. “That... doesn't sound like a great idea.”

“Oh, come on! With this whole... random morphing thing, the forest is about the safest place I could be. And not just for myself.”

“If Tobias isn't following Jeremy Jason, he's probably trying to hunt some dinner before sundown.” I bit my lip. “Maybe we should head out somewhere isolated, though. Just in case.”

“Let's go see how the boys are doing.”

“See, that's the opposite of what we're supposed to do.”

Rachel stood up and grabbed my shoulders. “Cassie. I'm falling apart here. I have to do something, you understand? I can't just... sit back and let stuff happen. I have to go out and actually fight, actually help, or else I'm not going to be able to stay calm for much longer. And then an elephant is going to fall through twenty two floors of unsuspecting hotel guests.”

That... could be a problem, actually. “Somewhere isolated, then. The mountains.”

“I can't just _hide out_ , Cassie!”

“Yes, you can. That's exactly what you should be doing.”

“No! Dangerous, important stuff is happening; I won't just hide away when – ” as she spoke, Rachel's skin began to darken and harden.

“Rachel!” I hissed, trying not to panic her by panicking myself. “You're morphing! You have to calm down!”

She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. After several long, tense moments, the dark shell melted back into soft flesh, and I let out the breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding.

“Okay,” I said, “this is clearly bothering you a lot. Want to talk about it?”

“I know talking helps you process things, but I honestly think it's just going to be dangerous here. You see what I mean, though. I can't keep this up. I mean, if Dad sees me like this...” she started to shrink, but before I could even say anything, she gritted her teeth and reversed the morph.

“Okay,” I said, trying to think. “Okay.”

And here's the big, important thing that everyone always forgets about mental discipline. The huge flaw in everyone's rationalist philosophy. The mistake we somehow keep on making.

Being able to recognize that a particular mental habit or response is irrational, being able to identify the factors that lead to it and note why it's wrong, _does not liberate you from that response_.

The fact that I knew I was feeling guilty about things that Rachel didn't know about, the fact that I knew cutting her slack and going along with stupidly dangerous plans as a result was outright stupid, didn't automatically stop me from doing it any more than understanding how confirmation bias works makes somebody magically impartial. Stupid, irrational habits of our little monkey brains are a persistent problem that don't ever just go away; they need to be fought every step, forever. There's no 'well I understand how irrational that is, I'll purge it from my thinking now, job done' moment. Not ever.

At the time, I looked at Rachel and I genuinely thought I was helping her.

I looked at Rachel and I decided that trying to insist on going somewhere isolated was too dangerous, because she might morph then and there.

I looked at Rachel, and for reasons that seemed completely logical at the time, I decided that she was right.

I mean, sure, it looks stupid _now_.

“Alright,” I said. “We can try to follow Mr. Johnson. IF we can find him. Which at this point, I doubt. But the instant things get dangerous, we leave, understand? I don't want to have to explain any major screw-ups to Jake right now.”

I mean, he was some random school counselor. He probably wasn't even all that high-ranking.

What could go wrong?


	11. Chapter 11

Mr. Johnson, as it turned out, hadn't left the school yet. He was still in his office when we arrived. The shades were still drawn but he'd opened the window a crack for air, so it was easy enough to sneak in as flies. The hard part was trying not to remember that last time I'd done this, I'd nearly been eaten by a spider.

Mr. Johnson was at a computer. I perched on his shoulder, banking on the idea that the yeerks wouldn't expect us to spy on some random counselor. He didn't appear to notice me. Unfortunately, my fly eyes couldn't make out very much on the computer screen. Something about the light of the screen was... strange, different to normal light, and looked all blurry and shifting. Mr. Johnson must have been able to see it fine, though, because he was scrolling down, reading something with intense concentration.

<There,> I said, <he's looking at a screen. Can we go now?>

<We have to see what's on that screen,> Rachel said. <I could come in as shrew, sit on the windowsill, and...>

<Okay, aside from the fact that I think he's going to notice a shrew if he happens to turn around? That morph freaks you out every time you do it. You hate the shrew.> Rachel was starting to scare me. I mean, she was normally sort of reckless. But she wasn't normally _stupid_. The was a very intelligent, perfectly tactical person, except for the brief moments when she was charging at way too many hork-bajir or running into gunfire to rip something apart or...

<I think we should withdraw and discuss our next step,> I said.

<Withdraw? I'm fine.>

<You are, but I'm not. Like I said, the last time we staked out this place...>

<Okay, let's withdraw.>

We flew out the window and headed for some nearby bushes. I made sure I was nestled securely in the bushes before demorphing. I didn't need to be able to get out; I had morphing for that. What I needed was to not be seen.

“Rachel,” I said when we were both reasonable approximations of human, “are you scared?”

“Scared?” she laughed. “I'm never scared. I'm Xena – ”

“Warrior Princess. Yes, I know. But I've known you for longer than Marco has called you that.”

Rachel looked away. “I'm... frustrated. By this allergy thing.”

“That sounds perfectly reasonable.”

“Yeah, I guess. It's annoying.” She shrugged. “It's not important. Now what?”

From our demorphing spot, we could still see part of Mr. Johnson's window. I glanced up, remembered sitting in that office, under that kindly, non-judgemental gaze while he told me that my feelings had value.

“Rachel,” I said quietly, “you can talk to me.”

She sighed. “I just want it out. You know? I feel like I should be able to control it, control myself; I mean, that's such a simple thing, right? And I keep slipping up. And everyone's making such a big deal about it, they have to, because I keep slipping up. Just this whole... thing...” she sighed again, and shook her head vigorously as if the motion could clear it. “I just want this thing out of me, you know? Last night, I... I kept wondering, what if I did it on purpose? What if I just went somewhere isolated and kept 'sneezing' until this _hereth_ thing happened and then I could be normal again? Well, Animorph-normal. But it keeps... it feels like it's growing, an uncontrollable thing inside me that just gets stronger and stronger every time I slip up. And keeps nearly getting us all killed, because I'm not strong enough.”

The sky was darkening and part of her face was obscured by branches, but I was pretty sure there were tears in Rachel's eyes. I'd need to calm her down.

“Rachel. This is a normal thing. You know, for andalites. It'll pass and we'll move on.”

“Yeah. I know.” She pushed some stray hair out of her face. Despite the fact that we were all tangled I branches and leaves, her hair looked perfect. “Sometimes, I wonder if my dad – ”

She stopped talking. We both froze. Somebody was walking past our bushes. Two somebodies. A tall, severe-looking woman I didn't recognize, and a tall teenager, maybe a couple of years older than us and with a face that looked like it would easily fall into a charming smile.

They stopped, as stupid, ridiculous luck would have it, almost directly in front of us. Rachel and I both tried very hard not to move.

“Will it be ready in time for the inspection?” Tom asked.

“Probably, sir. If there are no more unexpected delays.”

“'Probably' isn't good enough. I need a yes or a no. And we are long past unexpected delays. We know the andalite bandits are here, we know they like to interfere. We should be able to expect delays by now, incorporate them; most importantly, not trouble Visser Three with them. He is heavily invested in having everything operational in time for the inspection, do you understand? If we have nothing functional to demonstrate, he will move our resources into this underwater facility.”

The woman sniffed. “That whole project is a waste of time and money. You have to understand that – ”

“Wrong,” Tom snapped. “Understanding and, more importantly, fixing any problems with the project is your job. My job is to tell you that Visser Three won't tolerate any more delays. I could very well have a promotion riding on this; you need to – ” Tom stopped talking.

He stopped talking because a branch had just snapped, right next to me, very loudly and obviously.

The branch had snapped because Rachel was morphing.

Both Controllers turned to look right at our bush. I froze, hoping they couldn't see us in the shadows, and did the only thing I could with two Controllers so close and about to discover our secret; I focused on the owl inside me.

Rachel, meanwhile, was growing. Familiar, shaggy fur was sprouting from her body; it was getting too dark to easily distinguish the color, but I knew it would be brown.

Of all the tiny little morphs Rachel had – cat, shrew, cockroach – she had to become a grizzly.

Tom walked slowly toward us, pulling a Dracon beam out of his jacket. I felt a familiar itching spread across my skin and knew that feathers were sprouting. Rachel grew, pressing me into a bush. Tom frowned and, as Rachel became too large to be concealed, his eyes widened. My mouth melted into a beak. A bush Rachel was tangled in was uprooted. Tom aimed.

<Rachel, run!> I screamed as soon as I could thought-speak. The bushes around me were torn from the ground, and I rolled to my still-human feet and took my own advice. We dashed along the side of the building, two half-morphed monstrosities, Rachel trying to come to grips while her grizzly fur was replaced by skunk and me hoping that Tom's yeerk didn't think to wonder why half-morphed andalites would run like humans.

Unfortunately, the school was full of Controllers. Fortunately, it was still _our_ school. We knew its layout. We ducked around a corner, forced ourselves into a gap between two buildings that was far too narrow to really be safe and hid in the overgrown grass between what I think was an air conditioning unit or something. By that point, we'd both shrunk a little, so we fitted. I grabbed Rachel's shoulders.

<Rachel. Calm down.>

“Thanks for the advice,” she hissed. “It's not like that's what I'm trying to do or anything.”

I mentally cursed myself. I'd forgotten that Tom was as much Rachel's cousin as Jake was. Of course seeing him like that was hard. <Can you morph owl?> I asked as the fur began to disappear from her face.

“I'll be lucky enough to hold human shape,” she whispered.

<Alright. We walk out of here, then.> I started focusing on human Cassie as we made our way, single file, through the narrow gap. By the time we started to grow, we were out the other side. Soon we were two human girls, standing around the school at night in leotards.

“This doesn't look weird at all,” Rachel muttered.

“Just... try to look like a Controller.”

“Sure, I'll get right on that.”

We neatened ourselves up and walked calmly and briskly along the side of the building, trying to stay as much in shadow as possible. We were nowhere near the front gates, but if we could get behind the oval, jump the fence...

“Sir! I think they went this way!” The voice belonged to the woman who had been talking to Tom. She was close. And getting closer.

We froze.

What to do? Wolf? Owl? Fight or flight? We couldn't just stand there!

Somebody grabbed me from behind, one hand over my mouth to stop me from crying out, and dragged me backwards through a little door I hadn't noticed. They'd grabbed Rachel, too, and released us both at once, calmly closing the door. I was looking for a weapon before they even let us go, but our captor quickly put both hands up in a pacifying gesture, then one finger across their lips while glancing at the door. _Hush. They'll hear us._

They looked like a young girl, taller than me but shorter than Rachel, although it was a bit hard to compare heights directly since Rachel and I were barefoot. The girl was dressed in dark grey stockings and an off-white leotard, the kind without legs or sleeves. She also wore a short skirt, the kind ice skaters sometimes wore, of a dark, murky green that seemed to blend into the shadows of our surroundings. Some kind of fabric of the same dark green had been folded into a thick belt, and on her head was a black balaclava, leaving only her eyes visible. A hole had been cut in the top for a long brown braid. She wore gloves that had clearly once been white, but were now very stained.

We stared.

Only several seconds later did it occur to me to look at our surroundings. We were in some kind of very small gardener's shed, with rakes and buckets and so forth lined up against the walls. It was about the size of a janitor's closet. The room was lit by the dim, yellowish glow of an old bulb, and I was worried that the Controllers searching for us might see it under the door... but then, I hadn't even realized the door was there, myself.

The Controller woman passed, and our savior waited several more seconds before taking a rake and using the handle to move some kind of panel in the roof aside. She climbed a rack of gardening supplies as if it was nothing, climbed through the hole into the roof, and disappeared for a few seconds, only to return upside-down, hanging from her feet from something inside the roof. She lowered her hands and gave an 'up here' sort of gesture.

Rachel and I exchanged a somewhat dumbfounded glance.

Rachel crouched and cupped her hands to give me a boost onto the shelves. Unlike her, I was no gymnast and needed all the help I could get. I let her steer me to a good foothold and then reached for the strange girl's hands; with some difficulty, she managed to maneuver me into the roof cavity.

The tiny shed we were in was part of one of the main school buildings, but the little shed itself didn't seem to have any roof insulation. There was just a little hole between ceiling and roof, like a very tiny attic. Rachel was pulled up, a lot more gracefully than me, and between the three of us there was very little room.

The strange girl replaced the roof panel, then, very slowly and quietly, shifted aside a section of roof.

She stuck her head out for a moment then, apparently satisfied that nobody was watching, climbed out. We followed. She repaired the roof hole and with a 'come on' gesture, crouched low and ran across the sloped surface toward the middle of the building.

We followed, as quickly and quietly as we could.

The school itself was very spread out, with three main classroom buildings plus the gym. The gym and two of the buildings full of classrooms, including the one we were on, were one story high; the other was two stories high. From our place on the roof of one of the buildings, we were able to clearly see the roof of the gym. We were also able to make out the figure on it. Trusting the darkness to his me, I concentrated on morphing my eyes to owl, and got a much clearer picture – another girl, dressed just like our rescuer but with dark red instead of green.

Our rescuer reached into the folded-up cloth around her waist. It must have concealed some kind of tool belt, because she pulled out a small flashlight and mirror. Shining the flashlight against the mirror's face, she rotated the glass to flash some kind of signal at the other girl, who answered in her own set of flashes. The other girl disappeared. Our rescuer held up one hand to us in a 'wait here' gesture, then dashed across the roof toward the gym.

The two buildings were a reasonable distance apart, with a nice wide footpath between them. But the girl didn't seem to care. Without hesitation, she ran full-speed to the edge of the roof, then launched herself forward, splaying her arms and legs. She sailed across the gap then, at the last moment, threw her arms forward and her legs downward, catching the edge of the gym roof. Her upper body was splayed against the roof, which must have slammed into her hips; her lower body dangled off the side. After a moment, she swung herself up in a single graceful movement, and kept running. She dropped out of sight.

“Cassie,” Rachel said after a long moment of silence, “does this allergy cause hallucinations?”

“I'm sure Ax would mention it if it did,” I said, trying to sound reasonable and unfazed by the situation as a whole.

“Right. So, another question... did we just get rescued by Sailor Scouts?”

I swallowed. “I think so? Maybe?”

“Right. Just checking.”


	12. Chapter 12

“Seriously,” Rachel said quietly as we crouched on the rooftop and tried not to make enough noise to alert Controllers on the ground or in the building, “what is going on?”

“I don't know,” I muttered. “But try to keep – ”

“Calm, yeah, I'm calm. This would be the absolute worst time to be an elephant.”

The 'sailor scout' in the dark green skirt returned rather quickly and led us to the end of the roof the farthest from the gym. That side overlooked a small playground built among some big old trees, swings and so forth clearly added by somebody who thought the school was for five-year-old children. Nobody actually used the play equipment for anything except something to lounge on, but it was there. We waited there, and I was about to ask what we were waiting for when suddenly the answer became abundantly clear.

Some kind of alarm sounded over the other side of the school. A couple of Controllers raced past, heading towards the sound. We waited until they were gone.

The strange girl stood on the edge of the roof and seemed to size up a nearby tree for a moment. Then, she jumped; her feet landed on a branch, her hands curled expertly around another. Now, I'm no gymnast, but I've watched Rachel at events before and I knew that nobody could just... jump into a tree like that and land so perfectly. She had to know exactly where the branches were. Her body had to know that, from sheer practice.

She swung out of the way, and made a 'come on' gesture. I looked at Rachel, wondering who should go first. But Rachel had the strangest expression on her face. She was clearly trying to remain expressionless, but some combination of confusion and disbelief was twisting her features. She stared at the girl, and wouldn't look at me.

I prepared to jump.

A few months ago, I would've called such a feat completely insane. I would never have attempted it. But a few months ago, I didn't have the ability to heal any injury that wasn't immediately fatal, and I wasn't living in fear of being captured by Controllers. I threw myself at the tree and scrabbled desperately at bark. One foot found a branch to support me, one wrist was grabbed by the strange girl. Good enough. I righted myself and got out of the way, making room for Rachel. She landed next to me a few seconds later.

We got out of the tree and raced for the school gates. There were a couple of Controllers lurking about, but the stranger lead us on a path that put various objects and scenery between us and their line of sight. We got out of the school, and kept running.

About half a block away from the school, we turned into a driveway. The girl led us around a house, into the backyard and behind a shed to a slightly run-down cubby house. The cubby house was wooden, and looked about the size of a small bedroom. Somebody had scrawled a symbol on the door in barely faded marker; a star inside an upside-down triangle. The girl knocked on the door three times, then led us in. The cubby house contained nothing but a few old-looking crates and boxes. The single window was boarded up. A torch sitting on one of the crates provided light. The other girl, the one in dark red, was already inside.

“You weren't followed?” she asked, looking us up and down suspiciously.

“Would I be here if I was?” our rescuer asked, in a voice that sounded somehow familiar.

“Don't know. Let's find out.” Without taking her eyes off us, the girl in red opened a small wooden box and rummaged around, pulling out a strange plastic hand tool. “Why did you bring them here? This is incredibly dangerous.”

“I couldn't just leave them.”

“Cat, we've been through this. We can't do this. It's far too risky, it'll draw far too much attention. They're Controllers!”

I could feel my own heart in my throat. I reached for Rachel's hand, willing her to remain calm. But if Rachel shared my fear and confusion, she hid it well. She sounded mostly indignant.

“Excuse me? I'm sorry, but _we_ have no reason to believe that _you_ aren't the Controllers here.”

It was hard to tell under the balaclava, but the girl in red seemed confused. She seemed to decide against replying, and looked at the little plastic tool in her hand. The push of a button turned on a little light at the end, and both Rachel and I froze.

“You can calm down, Liz,” the girl in green said, pulling up her balaclava to expose her ears and everything below. Only then did I recognize her. I gripped Rachel's hand harder.

“They're not Controllers,” Melissa Chapman continued. “They're andalite bandits.”


	13. Chapter 13

I felt Rachel's hand change shape slightly within mine, and stepped in front of her, trying to look like I was being protective rather than shielding her from sight.

“What do you mean, andalite bandits?” I asked. Even I could hear my voice doing that high-pitched, fakey thing it does when I'm trying to lie on the spot. I squeezed Rachel's hand in support. _Get it together, Rachel, you can freak out later._

“Real teenagers would know better than to try to infiltrate the school dressed like that,” Melissa explained. “It's not casual wear. I assume that's how they noticed you.”

“You're dressed like this!” Rachel exclaimed.

“We were hiding. You've taken on the shape of Controllers, so I can only assume you were trying to blend in?”

The girl in red – 'Liz', Melissa had called her – stuck the end of her plastic tool in Melissa's ear and peered closely at it.

“Um,” Rachel said, “what are you doing?”

“Yeerk check,” Liz muttered, distracted.

“We were separated for several minutes today,” Melissa explained. “We have to make sure that neither of us were captured. We can't afford spies.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, “you can detect Controllers?!”

“Melissa,” Rachel said.

“Call me Cat. I'm Cat on duty, and this is Lizard. We have to protect our identities.”

“Okay, um, Cat... what's going on here? What are you doing?”

“Tonight? Investigating.” She tilted her head so that Lizard could inspect her other ear. “Something new is happening at the hospital, and we're mapping the chain of command for the project.”

Rachel's hand in mine was becoming rubbery, the skin melding together. I squeezed harder. We were silent while Lizard finished inspecting Melissa, changed the head of the tool out for a clean one, and handed it over, pulling up her balaclava so that Melissa could inspect her. Slowly, Rachel's fingers softened and separated once more.

“I meant,” Rachel continued carefully once she seemed to have control, “what is this whole... sailor scout thing?” She stepped around me, watching Melissa carefully.

“Oh, you mean the Star Defenders.”

“Star Defenders?” Rachel sounded as confused as I felt.

Melissa pulled away from Lizard's ear and took something out of her belt. A pendant. A fake-jewel-encrusted star set in a circle – the pendant we'd given her to prove that we weren't a dream when we'd told her about the yeerks. “Yes,” she said, twisting the star so that it sparkled in the light , “the Star Defenders. People who have lost family and friends to this invasion, banding together to protect each other and fight back.” She put the pendant away and moved onto Liz's other ear.

“You can't... you're putting yourself in danger,” Rachel protested.

“We know. Can't be helped.”

“Just stop jumping along rooftops and following Controllers around!”

“Miss Andalite, I know you mean well. But they have my parents,” Melissa said.

“They have my brother,” Liz growled.

“They have the girl whose form you're using,” Melissa added, “and she's a good friend of mine. You think we're just going to abandon these people?”

Rachel quickly turned away. Her eyes looked large and yellow. I stepped in front of her again.

“Clean,” Melissa said, pulling away from Liz. They both pulled their balaclavas back down.

“So you can detect yeerks?” I asked again.

“No,” Liz said, “we can detect wounds. Yeerks need to make a little pinhole wound in the ear to get in. It's tiny and hard to see, but it takes more than three days to heal, so...” she shrugged.

Why hadn't I thought of that?!

“Does it affect hearing?” I asked. “Do Controllers have slightly impaired hearing?”

“We've not had much opportunity to experiment,” Liz replied mildly.

“So this is what you're doing?” Rachel asked. “Running around, making yourselves a threat to evil alien invaders?”

“I certainly hope so,” Melissa answered. “If somebody comes and takes my life, enslaves my friends and family? Yeah, I want to be a threat to them.” She waved the tool in her hand somewhat apologetically. “I need to check both of you, too.”

Melissa being that close to Rachel in such circumstances could be a problem. “Uh,” I said, “I don't think that's going to help you. We don't injure easily.” I held up my arm so that some of the scratches I'd acquired jumping into the tree were clearly visible, slowly oozing blood. Then I turned around so that the Star Defenders couldn't see the arm and, while it was blocked from their sight, quickly covered it with wolf flesh and morphed it back. I demonstrated my clean arm.

“Huh,” Melissa said. “That's a potential problem.”

Liz eyed us suspiciously. “They could be – ”

“If they were Controllers, they could have overpowered us,” Melissa shrugged. “Shapeshifters, remember?”

“With healing powers,” Liz said, not trying to hide the envy in her tone.

“So,” I said. “You're following up on a hospital thing?”

“Something called Ehkol.”

“The vaccination thing?” Rachel asked. “We never did get to the bottom of that.”

“It's a vaccination thing?” Liz asked.

“How much do you know about it?” I asked.

“Not much. We just know they're building something, and Visser Three really, really wants it to succeed. At first we thought they were just securing their hold on the hospital, but this looks like something new.”

“We don't know what they're building,” I explained. “But 'ehkol' means 'pipeline' in yeerkish. They're developing some kind of drug. And we think they want to disguise them as vaccinations.”

Liz sucked a breath through her teeth. “That could be a serious problem. You know, depending on the drug. Private or public system?”

“Huh? What?”

“Are these available to the public, or are they for people with specific kinds of private health insurance?”

“Does it matter?”

“Well, it tells us whether they're for Controllers or not.”

“Hang on,” I said, “what's this about health insurance?”

“The small insurance companies that have been cropping up for Controllers,” Melissa said. “Are the vaccinations connected to any of those?”

I exchanged a glance with Rachel. “The yeerks actually are buying voluntary Controllers with health insurance?!” I asked. “I was so sure I must have misinterpreted that!”

“It's not for potential Controllers, it's for existing Controllers,” Liz explained. “Say a Controller is in a car accident, and falls into a coma.”

“Right,” I said.

“Now let's say the doctors want to perform an MRI to get a look at their brain.”

“They'd see the yeerk,” Rachel said, realization dawning.

“Right. The yeerks had to secure a major hospital to stop that sort of thing from happening. Certain yeerk-controlled companies and organizations offer private insurance that ensures more.. adequate facilities for sick Controllers. Their own MRI and X-ray specialists, private rooms for long-term stays, and eye doctor for some reason we haven't figured out yet...”

Rachel snorted behind me, trying not to laugh.

“The eye doctor is probably our friend's fault,” I said mildly. “He has a particular combat technique. The Sharing were holding a vaccination awareness day, so I'm guessing these drugs are for the public.”

The Star Defenders exchanged a look and a slight nod.

“Wait,” Rachel said. “You can't pursue this.”

“If we haven't noticed each other for this long, I doubt we'll be getting in each others' way,” Liz said.

“It's not that. It's that you could get killed. You could literally be killed by aliens, or worse, slaves in your own heads. How do you think your family and friends would feel if they lost you?”

Melissa locked eyes with Rachel. Her eyes were expressive enough that even through the balaclava, I could tell her expression was completely neutral.

“If I'm captured,” she said tonelessly, “then my parents become more free. They become free to fight.”

That did it.

I had no hope of shielding Rachel before feathers started sprouting down her body. Melissa was looking right in her eyes as they spread and changed color, becoming the eyes of an eagle. Melissa and Liz both stepped back, startled.

“My friend is ill,” I said quickly, getting between Rachel and the Star Defenders. “It affects her control over her shape. It will pass.”

Melissa stared for a moment, seemed to decide that alien weirdness wasn't her problem, and moved on. “Miss Andalite, I appreciate what your people are doing to protect our planet. But it is our planet, and we too must do everything that we can to protect it. I won't be any less dead or enslaved by doing nothing. It just means I might have a little more time to watch the people around me fall prey to an invading force that I could do something about.”

Rachel gritted her teeth and breathed slowly, deeply, through them. I took her hand in mine again, and she squeezed in time with her breaths. Her feathers began to vanish. “Okay, you know what?” she said. “I can't deal with this right now. This Star Defender thing is going to have to wait. First Jeremy Jason, now this...”

“You mean Jeremy Jason McCole?” Melissa asked with sudden enthusiasm.

“He's coming here for the Barry and Cindy Sue show!” Liz squealed. “I can't believe it!”

“He's coming there to endorse The Sharing,” I informed them.

Everyone was silent for about five seconds.

“That's a problem,” Melissa said mildly.

“Yes. Yes it is.”

“How do we stop it?”

“'We' don't do anything,” Rachel interjected. “It's an Ani... an andalite problem. We'll handle it.”

“Is he a Controller?” Liz asked.

“We don't know,” I admitted. “And without three days left to monitor him, we can't find out.”

Melissa looked at the tool in her hand.

“We can,” she said.

“No,” Rachel said. “Absolutely not.”

Melissa ignored her. “The question is, how do we get close enough?”

“You don't think it might be kind of suspicious for you to stick that thing in Jeremy Jason McCole's ear?” I asked.

“Nearly all the Star Defenders are teenage girls,” Liz explained. “Teenage girls mobbing Jeremy Jason, even if they're poking him with some strange implement? Difficult, sure. But not suspicious.” She turned to Melissa. “We don't have the time to plan this. And he's on a freaking yacht. How can we sneak on a yacht?”

“I'll call Crow tonight,” Melissa replied. “See what we have available. In the meantime, weren't we in the middle of escaping?”

“Coast should be clear. Let's go.” Liz straightened her balaclava and led the way out of the cubby house.

We waited until we were out of sight of the Star Defenders to morph owl and get out of there. I watched Rachel carefully the whole journey, afraid she'd start morphing and fall from the sky. But flying seemed to do her good. We were silent as we made our way back to the hotel, just two predators swooping through the darkness.


	14. Chapter 14

“You're mad at me,” I said as we rode the elevator back up to the hotel room.

“I'm not allowed to be mad at you,” Rachel replied through gritted teeth. “If I'm mad at you, I could kill someone. So maybe we should talk about this later. Assuming we've beaten my Dad back and I'm not grounded.”

She was handling it pretty well, all things considered. She'd never wanted Melissa involved. She'd been worried about exactly this sort of thing.

“Their outfits are nice,” Rachel said after a small, awkward silence. “But what kind of name is 'Star Defenders'?”

“You're right, Animorphs is so much better.”

We both giggled, and tension seemed to leak out of the small elevator.

“I disagree on the outfits, though,” I said. “I mean, they're too distinctive. If they all dress like that, they're too easy to pick out.”

“But if they're running around on rooftops and in shadows, don't they want to be able to identify each other at a distance?” Rachel pointed out. “And they're...” she shook her head in disbelief. “You saw her do that rooftop jump, right? Wasn't that the coolest thing you've ever seen? I had no idea she could jump like that.”

“The other girl, Liz...”

“Amanda. She's called Amanda. She does gymnastics too. I bet they're all secret gymnast superheroes.” She didn't even try to hide the jealousy in her voice.

“Hey, we have alien shapeshifting powers,” I pointed out, lifting an eyebrow. “We're cooler than they are.”

“I bet they don't have a Marco, telling awful jokes all the time.”

“Yeah but they don't have an Ax, either.”

The elevator opened, and we got out. We kept silent until we were in the hotel room (Rachel's dad wasn't back yet, thank goodness), and then spoke quietly. It'd be just our luck if some random Controller in the next room overheard us.

“She thinks I'm a Controller,” Rachel said.

“Huh?”

“Melissa. You heard her. She said 'You've taken on the shape of Controllers, so I can only assume you were trying to blend in'.”

“Well, you've been spending a lot of time with the Animorphs lately. And having to lie about your whereabouts and suchlike.”

“Yeah. I guess.” She bit her lip. “Should we tell them who we are?”

“If we did, and any Star Defenders got caught...”

“Yeah, that's true. I guess it's safest for both groups to know as little as possible about each other, huh?”

“But she was right about one thing. They can help us here.”

“Cassie. No.”

“Rachel. Imagine that that night at the construction site, Elfangor hadn't given us morphing powers. Imagine he'd just told us what was happening, and then we had to run away. Would you have sat by and done nothing about the invasion?”

“Of course not.”

“Then how can you expect her to?”

“This is your fault, you realize. All of it.”

“Yes. Yes, I do. And you have every right to be mad at me, and you can get all good and mad at me later after this allergy thing has passed; but for now, you need to be calm, and we need to focus on the situation we're in and what to do about it. The yeerks have her _parents_. We can't stop the Star Defenders from fighting this war. We can't stop her from trying to get close to Jeremy Jason. But we can make it as safe and easy as possible for her.”

Rachel stared neutrally at me for several seconds. “We're going to talk about this,” she said, sounding exactly like her mother. “In detail, and at great length.”

“We will.”

She sighed, went over to the phone, and dialed an external number. “Hi, Mr. Chapman. Yeah, it's Rachel. Can I talk to Melissa? Thanks.” There were a few seconds of silence, and then her voice suddenly became happy and excited. “Melissa? Guess what GUESS WHAT GUESS WHAT! Okay, so you know how I keep falling in things, right? Yeah? Well I'm going on a talk show and YOU'LL NEVER GUESS WHO ELSE IS GONNA BE THERE!!”

While Rachel and Melissa both squealed into the phone for each others' benefit, I sat down, closed my eyes, and thought hard. We needed to plan exactly how we were going to handle the Barry and Cindy Sue Show.

More importantly, we needed to plan just how we were going to explain this to Jake.


	15. Chapter 15

“Wait,” Marco said. “What?”

It was the next morning. Saturday morning. The day of the Barry and Cindy Sue Show. We were gathered in Ax's meadow, and for once, Marco didn't have a comeback.

“What?” Marco said again. He, like everyone else apart from Ax, was staring at Rachel.

Rachel sighed and explained once more. “Melissa has organized a bunch of people into an anti-yeerk resistance force called the Star Defenders. I don't know how. I don't know how many. I don't know what they do, exactly. But the couple we ran into could move like monkeys, it was amazing. They want to help us with this whole Jeremy Jason McCole thing.”

Everyone just kept staring.

Ax broke the silence. <You said that they had a method of detecting Controllers?>

“They have an ear telescope thing. I think it's a doctor's tool? They check for ear damage to see if a yeerk's been inside somebody's head recently.”

<Can we not acquire one of these tools for ourselves? Are they difficult to operate?>

“No idea if they're hard to use,” I said, “but they didn't look expensive. We could probably steal one from a doctor or something.”

“And you just happened to run into these girls?” Jake asked.

“Yeah,” Rachel said.

Jake glanced at me. I met his gaze steadily. He seemed to decide not to press the issue, at least, not now.

“Whether we can detect Controllers is irrelevant,” Jake said. “Jeremy Jason would have to be a Controller by the time he goes on air. Today notwithstanding.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said, “how did surveillance go? Learn anything new?”

Suddenly, none of the boys wanted to meet our eyes.

“Nothing worth talking about,” Jake said quickly. “You were saying, Marco?”

“Well, like I said, they seemed really interested in not letting him see anything on the boat. And they're still being cautious around him, so he's not a Controller yet. I was thinking, what if they don't make him a Controller at all? I mean, all they want him to do is endorse The Sharing, right? He's an actor, he probably already knows how to do that better than any yeerk.”

“But why wouldn't they make him a Controller?” I asked. “I mean, if only for safety. And he might be useful for endorsing other stuff in the future.”

“Because, Cassie, he's a busy acting star. Does he have time to visit a yeerk pool every three days? That's gotta hold him back. I mean, I don't know how many yeerk pools are on Earth, but if he's travelling around like this...”

“So our mission depends on whether he's a Controller or not,” Jake said, sounding tired. “If he is, then we need to save him before he can do too much damage. If he isn't then... what?”

“We need to stop pretty much the entire teen girl population of America from taking his advice,” Rachel said.

“How?” Jake asked.

Rachel and I exchanged a glance. “We make him... not... cute?” I said tentatively.

“We crash him,” Marco said, nodding.

“We what?”

“We crash his career. Get him to say something stupid on camera, or... or get him arrested for drugs, or something. He'll rebuild, but not right away.”

“Marco,” Rachel said, “if Shaquille O'Neal said something stupid on camera, would you suddenly stop listening to him?”

“Well, no, but he's Shaq.”

“And this is Jeremy Jason McCole.”

“So what do we do, then?” Marco asked.

“I don't know,” Jake said grimly. “But we've got about twelve hours to figure it out.”


	16. Chapter 16

I met Rachel and her dad outside the studio. I didn't think it was a very good idea for us to turn up together immediately after meeting the Star Defenders as andalite bandits together, but she'd need the support. Besides, we were best friends. It would probably be weird if Rachel told Melissa about the whole thing and I _wasn't_ there. What kind of friend wouldn't tell their best friend? And why would I pass up on the opportunity to be close to Jeremy Jason McCole? So I was going in human, and the boys were staking out the place as insects.

Rachel looked great, as always, even though she'd been able to salvage hardly any clothes from the house collapse. We were about to go in when Melissa and three other girls I vaguely recognized as some of Rachel's gymnastics acquaintances ran over.

“Rachel!” Melissa called, waving and looking for all the world as if she was really excited to be at a TV studio and super happy for her friend. “Hi, Cassie!”

“Hi, Melissa!” I replied, trying not to look like I was seeing her for the first time since discovering she was a leotard-kitted freedom fighter.

She gave Rachel a quick hug, and the other girls all patted her arm or shoulder and murmured some variation of 'are you okay?'

“You brought a lot of people,” Rachel said, eyeing the small crowd.

“Well, duh,” one of the girls said, and I placed her voice – Liz. Or Amanda. Whatever her name was. “I mean, Jeremy Jason McCole is here.”

“Is he inside?” Melissa asked. “Have you met him?”

“No,” Rachel said, “I just got here.”

“Let's go then!” a third girl said, barely containing her excitement.

Somehow, Rachel's dad got all seven of us past the security guard even though only she was being interviewed. All things considered, he's pretty cool, for a dad. We sped through reception and marched down a corridor.

Suddenly, a llama came tearing past. Its dainty hooves skittered crazily on the waxed linoleum. It turned a corner and was gone.

"What the..." Rachel's dad said.

Two people dressed in khaki raced up and shoved past us. They turned the corner after the llama and were gone.

We all just stood there staring at each other. Then a third person, a woman with a clipboard, ran up breathlessly. "Did you see a llama?"

I pointed. "That way."

"Hey, what's the deal?" Rachel's dad asked.

The woman shook her head like the world was coming to an end. "Bart Jacobs is on the show with his animals. The llama made a run for it. Smart animal."

"Bart Jacobs?" Rachel asked. "Isn't he that guy who takes animals on the talk shows?"

"That's him, all right,” I said with distaste. “He's not even a vet or a conservationist or anything. I hate seeing wild animals dragged into studios and treated like -"

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Rachel said quickly. She grabbed my hand and dragged me to a conveniently nearby ladies' room. It was empty, and she pushed the door closed and leaned on it.

“I can't do this, Cassie,” she said.

“Sure you can. You're doing great. We got them in, now the rest is up to the Star Defenders and the boys. You just have to hold it together long enough to do the interview, no more Animorphs stuff required.”

“No, I really can't do it. Not with Melissa. Not with Jeremy Jason. Not working around my dad. I don't think you appreciate how difficult this is. I'm about to morph any second, and if that happens on live national television...”

“So you want to say you're sick? Go home?”

“Abandon the mission now? No, this has to go ahead.”

“Then what do you...” my half-voiced question was answered when Rachel pulled up her sleeve and held her bare arm out to me. She didn't meet my eyes. “Oh,” I said. “Rachel, no.”

“Somebody looking like me has to be on that stage, and I can't do it. I've tried. I'm still trying. But I can't, I can't control it.”

“I'm not sure morphing humans is... I mean, I know Marco and Ax have done it, but...”

“You're not stealing some random person's DNA, Cassie. I'm giving you permission.”

“But I still don't understand how the whole... instinct thing... works. If I do this and there's a thinking, reasoning human brain in there, and then after two hours...” I swallowed.

“I don't know about Ax but I'm pretty sure Marco would have mentioned that if it was the case.”

Slowly, hesitantly, I reached up and placed my hand on Rachel's bare arm. I focused, let her form flow into me. Rachel's eyes fluttered and she leaned back against the wall.

Rachel nodded approvingly and unbuttoned her blouse. “As a bonus, you'll get to look fashionable for once.”

I too, started undressing. “Rachel, I don't know any of these gymnast girls like you do! I don't know Melissa all that well, I – ”

“You don't have to. You know me. You know me better than anyone.” Rachel gave a small, crooked smile. “You just have to be me.”

I nodded. Closed my eyes. Focused on Rachel.

As far as morphs go, it was the simplest and least weird I've ever done. I mean, a human is a human. It's kind of weird that we spend so much time picking out little differences between each other when, if you look at the animal kingdom as a whole, we're barely distinguishable from one another. No skin hardening to chitin, no gills opening along my jaw, no sudden crack as my hips realigned for quadrupedal movement... just a slight change in bone lengths and some minor remolding of muscles, cartilage and surface fat. My skin lightened; paler, straighter hair bloomed from my scalp. My jaw changed shape, my fingernails lengthened.

It barely classified as a change, really.

But while the morphing process was a non-event, the morph itself was somewhat creepy. I looked up to see Rachel staring back at me from the mirror. Her eyes – my eyes – widened a little in shock at the sight, even though I knew exactly what I would see.

I took a couple of experimental steps. As with every morph, my body automatically compensated for the differences in balance and gravitational center that should make me fall over. Which was kind of weird, when I thought about it. Did morphs include muscle memory? They'd have to; birds learned to fly, wolves learned to fight, and somehow, we'd never had a problem.

“I wonder if I could do gymnastics in this form,” I said, and was immediately weirded out by the sound of my – Rachel's – voice.

“I can't even do gymnastics in this form,” was Rachel's response. “Also I don't sound like that. Your pitch is too... apologetic.”

“Apologetic?” I asked, but I knew what she meant. I was raising my tone at the end of sentences, like I always did. Rachel didn't do that. And I needed to sound like Rachel.

“I'd better get to this interview,” I said, imitating Rachel's tones as well as I could.

“Indeed you better. And, 'Rachel'?”

“Yes, Rachel?”

Rachel smiled. “Kick media butt.”


	17. Chapter 17

"Okay," Rachel's dad said when I reappeared, "we have to keep moving." He started off again and we fell into step behind him.

“Where did Cassie go?” Melissa asked.

“She wasn't feeling well,” I shrugged.

Rachel's Dad swept us in his wake toward the makeup room. The door was open. A woman with weird hair and black lipstick looked at Rachel's dad and gave a little leer. Then she looked over the rest of us, like she was trying to figure out what to do with our faces.

"She's the one," Rachel's father said, pointing at me. "Rachel, meet Tai. Tai, my daughter Rachel. She's on the show."

"The skin is beautiful," Tai said. "But I think we want more body in the hair." She grabbed a handful of my hair and sort of threw it disdainfully. "What do you use on your hair?"

“Oh. Um. Conditioner?”

Tai sneered. Rachel's dad took off to schmooze with some people he knew, and Melissa's crew disbanded, presumably on the hunt for Jeremy Jason. Tai shoved me into a barbershop-style chair, whipped a sheet over her, and began doing things with brushes.

Rachel's dad and friends heading off like that made things a lot easier. I tolerated Tai pushing me around like a prop while she put various types of gunk and powder on my face. At her command, I closed my eyes while she put some kind of powder on them.

When I opened them, I was looking right into the crystal blue eyes of Jeremy Jason McCole.

Okay, so it sounds kind of stupid now. I mean, he was just an actor. A really, really cute actor. It's not like I was confusing him for his character on Power House or anything. And I knew he was kind of a jerk. I've never been one to fall for looks alone; I mean, who cares? The body is a machine to move the brain around. And I had no reason to believe he had any of the traits I actually admired – strength, intelligence, gentleness, caring about others. So I shouldn't have melted into the makeup chair when he smiled at me.

But I did.

“Hi,” he said. “I'm Jeremy Jason McCole.”

“Hi,” I managed to say in a wobbly voice.

“Are you in the show, too?”

“Yeah. I, um, I fell into a crocodile pit. And had a house fall on me.” Why was I saying those things? Did I think that would make Jeremy Jason like me more? That that would impress him?

Why did I care so much about impressing him?

“Right. Well, Disaster Girl, or whoever you are, how about you stumble on out of here? I need to get made up, and I don't need an audience.”

_What?!_

Tai stopped playing with brushes and waved me out of the chair. Feeling somewhat numb, I got up and left.

Had he actually spoken to me like that? Seriously?

Did he really think he could get away with treating his fans like that just because he was unbelievably cute?

I shut the door behind me with slightly more force than necessary and leaned against the wall.

When I looked up, there was a llama standing calmly in the hallway.

<Hi, Rachel,> the llama said in Marco's mental voice.

“I'm Cassie,” I muttered.

<Cassie? You look different. Did you do something with your hair?>

“Marco, why are you a llama?”

<Who wouldn't want to be a llama? Check out this fur. Check out this little llama smile on my little llama face.>

"What are you doing?"

<Jake's somewhere around here in cockroach morph. Ax is here in fly morph. I came that way, too. But then I saw this llama wandering around loose. So I thought, hey, why be a bug?>

"Where's the real llama?"

<Don't worry. I put him in an empty dressing room. By the way, I saw the schedule. Bart Jacobs and various animals of his, including yours truly, go on first, then you, then the Wussy Wonder.>

Of course they'd close with Jeremy Jason. It was the best way to be sure that everyone would watch the show all the way through.

Marco shot a llama look to his left. <Uh-oh. Looks like I'm busted.>

The two khaki-clad trainers appeared at the end of the hallway. They crept up slowly. Marco waited patiently till they caught him, slipped a rope around his neck, and led him away.

<See you later,> Marco called back. <Break a leg. Not literally. That's just what we show biz people say to mean "good luck." I'm going to be on tee-vee-ee. I'm going to be on tee-vee-ee.>

“I swear you used to be the super-pessimistic one of this group,” I muttered even though Marco had already gone. “Is everybody on drugs today or what?”

Just then, Melissa and her handful of Star Defenders rounded the corner. “You ready to be a TV star, Rachel?” Melissa asked.

“Your makeup looks great,” another of the girls said.

I jerked my thumb at the makeup room. “Jeremy Jason's in there,” I said.

Somebody who wasn't looking for it would probably never have noticed Melissa glance down, just for a moment, at the lapel of her jacket where a single housefly was hiding. They would only have seen the delight spread slowly across her face as she and her friends dashed for the door.

"Hey! You! The Falling Girl! Come on!"

The clipboard woman came rushing past and grabbed my arm, pulling me down the hall.

"Okay, listen up because we're desperately late. You go on in the last segment. I'll tell you when to go. You walk across the stage to Barry. He'll shake your hand. Then Cindy Sue will shake your hand, unless she's in a snit. Then you sit. Don't worry about which camera to look at, just look at Barry and Cindy Sue. Barry and Cindy Sue will ask you about all this alligator stuff – "

"Crocodile," I corrected.

"You tell them your little story. If Barry does this with his hand, that means speed up. If he does this with his hand, it means wrap it up because we're done. Got it? Good. Nothing to worry about."

That seemed straightforward enough.

<It would appear that this actor is not a Controller,> Ax announced. Great. So what exactly were we supposed to do?

<Guys?> Rachel said. <We might have a real problem here.>

<Rachel?> Jake asked. <Where are you? What are you?>

<I'm hiding out in a bathroom and _I don't know_. There's bear, but also some wings, I think? I don't know what these feet are. >

We were starting to line up to go on stage. I started looking for an excuse to leave so that I could talk to Rachel, then remembered I was in morph. Duh.

<Rachel, stay calm,> I said, completely unhelpfully.

<I was calm! I was! I have now reached the point where it is completely impossible to stay calm!>

Bart Jacobs headed out in front of the cameras with Marco and several presumably non-Animorph animals in tow.

<Rachel should leave, if possible,> Ax said calmly.

<No!> Marco said. <If she's morphing out of control, nobody should see her until she calms down.>

<You calm down with something scaly erupting from your spine!> Rachel snapped.

<Assuming that I am understanding Rachel's symptoms correctly,> Ax said, still calm, <she may be experiencing the _hereth illint_. >

<Now?!> Jake exclaimed.

<That's a good thing, right?> Rachel asked.

<In a manner of speaking. Once you eject the crocodile from your system, you should regain control over your morphing abilities. It may be a little difficult to control the side effects in this location.>

<Side effects? What side effects?>

<The crocodile,> Ax said as if it was obvious. <I am given to understand that it is a very dangerous creature?>

<What about the... oh, this is not good...>

“And now we're going to talk to a girl who survived not only falling into a crocodile pit, but had her house fall in on her as well! How does this girl keep cheating certain death? Let's find out!”

 _She cheats certain death by having alien shapeshifting and healing powers_ , I thought to myself as I was pushed out in front of the cameras. _You get used to it_. I smiled shyly and gave the studio audience a little wave. _Wait, no; that's not Rachel_! I smiled more broadly and gave a wider wave. My hands knew how to move, my body knew how to walk. I don't know how much of Rachel's natural grace is inborn and how much is muscle memory, but it sure was nice to fall back on.

Under the sudden stress of lights and cameras, I began to notice the differences between Rachel's mind and my own. Rachel was a little bit more aggressive and more defensive than me. I wanted to hide, but when I let the morph lead, my hesitation to step out into the light lessened. She seemed less intensely curious than me (although it was hard to tell through my own curiosity) but more generally aware of people, of when they were looking at her and what those looks meant, of when they were trying to engage and whether they were a threat.

It was no different to the bat's dislike of light or the dolphin's awareness of sharks, I knew that. It was much less noticeable, in fact, because the differences were comparatively slight; a human brain was a human brain. It was just another morph. There was none of Rachel's mind or memories, although one could probably argue that whatever in her life had caused her to develop more of an awareness of others than me counted as memory.

But I decided then and there that I did not like morphing humans. Morphing humans creeped me out.

I shook hands with Barry, then Cindy Sue. I sat down.

<Rachel,> Jake said, <what's going on?>

<You really, really don't want to know, Jake! Oh, and anybody near this bathroom might want to be somewhere else real soon. Does anybody know if a grizzly bear can beat a crocodile?>

“So, Rachel, it seems you've been quite lucky,” Barry said, smiling at me.

<Not in the water, but on land, maybe, if you're lucky. Why do you need to know?> I replied to Rachel. To Barry I said, “I wouldn't call myself lucky.”

“Well, you survived a crocodile attack and a house collapse with barely a mark! I'd call that lucky.”

I cocked an eyebrow, like I'd seen Rachel do hundreds of times. “If I was lucky, I wouldn't keep falling into things.”

<Because it's really crowded in here and I think we're both mad,> Rachel growled.

<'Both'? Who is 'both'?!>

I heard what sounded like a cave-in or small explosion, followed by a sound that may have been muffled and muted by distance and several walls, but that I knew much too well not to recognize. The roar of a grizzly bear. I went to turn and look behind me, but Barry held my gaze. Of course, he wouldn't realize what was happening. To him, it was the sound guy's problem.

“So how did you end up in the crocodile pit, exactly?” Cindy Sue asked, pulling us neatly into the 'tell the story' part of the segment.

<Oh, god! There's a civilian in the way!>

<Coming through!>

“We were on a field trip to The Gardens,” I explained. “For a wildlife conservation thing.”

<Marco, we need a gorilla in here!>

<I'm trying to slip this lead! It's not easy for a llama!>

<WHY ARE YOU A LLAMA?!>

“Hey,” Barry joked, “anything for a day out of school, right?”

<Prince Jake, I have failed to deter the crocodile. I seem to have made it angrier.>

“Wildlife conservation is really important,” I began, before remembering that I was supposed to be Rachel. “Anyway, we were looking at the crocodiles, right? And this kid...”

Something crashed. I heard the roar of a tiger.

“Did you guys hear that?” I asked.

Cindy Sue's expression didn't change as she frantically motioned for somebody off-camera to go check it out. “I'm sure it's nothing. Please go on.”

“So we were at The Gardens – ”

A high-pitched scream from the corridor drew everyone's attention. Suddenly, a animals – ferrets, squirrels, a large goat – dashed across the stage, right in front of us. There was another scream.

The audience looked restless, but not frightened. “Could Mr. Jacobs please control his animals?” Barry called, just as the crocodile charged in.

Most people assume that crocodiles are clumsy and slow. They are not. They work better in the water, but they can be very fast on land. Too fast for prey to outrun.

This one dashed across the stage at lightning speed, and we all clambered onto our chairs.

<Rachel?> I asked.

<Yeah?>

<Are you a crocodile?>

<No, I'm a bear. That is a real crocodile.>

There were still cameras pointing at me. I couldn't demorph.

For some reason, I was wondering if I could jump down onto the crocodile's back and wrestle with it, Steve Irwin style. I'd seen people do it before.

I stayed where I was.

<You... created a new crocodile from nothing...?> I asked dimly as a grizzly bear charged past, roaring, and leapt on top of the crocodile in a very un-grizzly-like manner.

<Not nothing!> Ax chimed in helpfully. <From excess matter in Zero-space! To excise the form from the Zero-space anchor, one must – >

<Maybe the physics talk can wait until I'm not separated from a crocodile by the mere height of a chair!>

“Can Mr. Jacobs please get his animals out of here!” Barry practically screamed.

“They aren't my animals!” Bart Jcobs screamed back. “Where would I get a tiger?!”

This comment was added because Jake had dashed through the door to help Rachel. Physically, his face was a mark of aggression and rage. Mentally, he was snapping off orders, trying to give all the bystanders time to get to safety. Several of the audience hadn't moved, apparently under the impression that anything happening in front of the cameras couldn't hurt them. The camera operators also remained at their posts, in some strange mix of bravery, stupidity and sheer job dedication. It was going out live, after all. I got out of there, looking for somewhere private to demorph, and as I ran, I saw Jeremy Jason McCole sprint past, his face a mask of sheer terror.

<Guys! Jeremy Jason's getting away!> I shouted mentally, dashing after him. I had no idea what we were supposed to do, but we had to do _something_. Rachel's superior physical fitness and longer stride helped me catch up to him easily.

“Jeremy Jason McCole!” I called, grabbing his arm and spinning him around. He glanced at me, glanced at the room he was fleeing from. He tried to pull away, but I backed him against a wall.

“Can I have an autograph?” I asked breathlessly, not letting go of him.

“Get off me!” he screamed. “Get off me, you crazy bit – ”

He didn't manage to finish that word, because I'd punched him. I'd punched him without thinking about it, right in the jaw. I stared at my own – well, Rachel's – fist.

Just at that moment, a grizzly bear loomed up behind me. I got out of the way.

Rachel picked up Jeremy Jason by his shirt in one paw and lifted him off the ground.

<Jeremy Jason McCole?> she said.

“Y... yes...” his voice was barely audible.

<I'm Sir Bearington of the United States Secret Animal Service. Stay away from The Sharing. They're an extremely dangerous organization and their influence runs deep. Cut all ties with them, cut all ties with whoever introduced you to them, and get out of this town, and you won't ever have to see me again. Deal?>

“... yes, sir...”

Sir Rachel Bearington dropped the poor actor and ambled back toward the crocodile. I got out of there before he could think too hard about it.

<Sir Bearington?> Marco asked incredulously.

<That was worse than the Elephant Police,> I added, wedging myself into a small office and focusing on my normal body.

<Who are the Elephant Police?> Ax asked.

<Hey, he bought it. Don't knock it.>

<He'd buy anything a huge telepathic bear said to him while holding him up off the ground,> I pointed out.

<And that's the beauty of it.>


	18. Chapter 18

The crocodile had been contained before I could assist in the battle. The Star Defenders had apparently been thrown out of the studio before the attack for assaulting Jeremy Jason. Fortunately, they weren't arrested.

I met up with Rachel a couple of days later, out in the paddock behind my barn. We weren't likely to be interrupted by parents or Animorphs there, and I wanted a private conversation.

“So,” I said. “It's probably safe to be mad at me now.”

Rachel picked at the bark of a tree thoughtfully. “I was mad,” she said. “But... I went along with bringing Melissa in on this. And, well... it's better that she knows the truth about her parents, right? I mean, their position sucks. It really does. But at least she knows they love her. And... and what she's doing is stupid and dangerous, but so is what we're doing. I guess we have to trust her – all of them – to make the right decisions.” She grinned suddenly. “Kind of a pity we ended up Animorphs, though, right? We could've been Star Defenders, saving the world with a bunch of girl gymnasts in pretty outfits.”

“I'd take unlimited healing over a nicer color scheme,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, but I bet they don't have a Marco.”

“I think every team has a Marco.”

“Maybe. I'm not mad at you, Cassie. You... we... did the right thing.” She turned to walk away.

I could let her go. It would be so, so easy to let her leave, to let it be over. All I had to do was nothing.

But she deserved better than that. And I... and I needed to be honest. Honesty didn't just mean not lying. Honesty meant telling the truth.

“Rachel, wait.”

She stopped, turned back.

“Rachel, you... you should be mad at me.”

The smile on her face froze. Then, it was replaced by a suspicious frown. “Why?”

“I haven't told you anything. But you should be mad.”

“Cassie, what did you do?”

I took a deep breath and composed myself. “I don't expect you to forgive me for this. But I do want you to understand it. So I'm going to go from the beginning, okay?”

“What is it?”

“We need to start freeing Controllers,” I said. “More importantly, we need people who know what Controllers are. We need systems in place that don't depend directly on us, so that we're not Earth's last hope. We need people like the Star Defenders, we need as many groups as possible opposing the yeerks and as independent of us as possible. Because otherwise, if we die, it's over. Right?”

“Right...”

“So let's say we wanted to start freeing Controllers. What then? What do we do to stop them getting reinfested? The obvious answer is to send them away, somewhere currently beyond yeerk reach, so far as we know. But then what? How are they supposed to get back on their feet in a new place? What are they supposed to do?”

“Where is this going, Cassie?”

“They need somebody. A person who isn't an Animorph, a person outside the line of fire. They need somebody to set up a... a shelter, I guess, to channel ex-Controllers out of their old lives and into new ones. It would have to be somebody with plenty of money to spare. Somebody easy to contact; who used to live in this town and moved away, for example. Especially if he comes back reasonably often.”

Rachel's voice was low, cold, dangerous. “Cassie, what are you saying?”

I avoided her eyes. “You hinted that your father was trying for custody of – ”

I was slammed back against the tree. One of Rachel's arms was across my throat. The other was drawn back, her hand bunched into a fist.

I didn't struggle.

“How much,” she asked in that same low voice, “does he know?”

“I told him same as Melissa,” I choked. “We're andalites, there's a yeerk invasion. I told him about Kandrona rays and what we needed from him.”

“My father. First my friend, now my _father_?” Her voice rose. “Are you trying to turn my whole life into fighting an alien invasion, Cassie?!”

“No! We... we needed him!”

“Of course you did. How many Controllers have we saved with him?”

“None yet.”

“And how many of your family have been pulled into this?”

I was silent.

“It's always mine, isn't it, Cassie? It's my dad who has to face the fact that his daughters are in constant danger. It's my friend risking her life on the rooftops. These people aren't chess pieces!” The knuckles of her fist were whitening.

“If you're going to hit me, you should just do it,” I said. I was pretty sure I deserved it.

“Hit you? I couldn't do that, Cassie.” Her fist loosened and, finally, fell. “I could never go out of my way to hurt you.” She turned to walk away. “Apparently that's your job.”

I didn't stop her that time. Perhaps I was being unfair to Rachel. Perhaps it was wrong of me to increase the danger to her father, however slightly. But we all had to fight for our planet, for our freedom.

All of us.


End file.
